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Staying Fit While on the Road and Traveling

Guest post by: Ellen Goldman

Article Overview: One of the biggest challenges with travel, outside of finding your luggage and your way around the airport, is maintaining your healthy lifestyle. However, with some creative ways, you can still take care of yourself while traveling, regardless if it's for business or pleasure!

Staying Fit While on the Road and Traveling

This past year, I had the pleasure of coaching employees of a large corporation. This was a new niche for me; not my typical client. A glimpse into corporate life showed me that individuals working for corporate America face a wide range of challenges quite different than those of us who are in business for ourselves. One of those challenges is sticking with healthy habits while traveling for business. When you need to be on the road two, three or even four times a month, sticking to a regular routine is not the norm.

This month I am finding that I will be getting a taste of a lifestyle that involves business travel. I will be on the road twice this month, and neither is for a vacation or fitness conference. So, this has got me thinking about how to incorporate some of the strategies my corporate clients and I brainstormed during our work together. I hope some of these tips will help you stay fit on the road, regardless of your reasons for travel. Happy trails!

Tips to Stay Fit While Traveling

1. Whenever possible, book a hotel with a fitness facility. No doubt about it, convenience is key to fitting in fitness. When you are only an elevator ride away from the gym, the chances that you’ll use it increase. Check meeting schedules and appointments, and plan your workout time in advance.
2. Wear your sneakers while traveling. Airports and train stations always include long corridors and long waits. Use them to include brisk walking. Avoid moving walkways, and take stairs rather than escalators. Make sure your carry-on is on wheels so that it won’t hinder your movement. If driving, take a break every 90-120 minutes, and walk around the parking lot of a rest stop.
3. If your travels include long layovers in the airport, find out if there is an airport fitness facility. Most large airports in major cities have areas to work out and shower. Some even have spa amenities such as massages or nail services.
4. Ask the hotel concierge for a map of walking/running trails that are nearby and safe. Ending a long day of back-to-back indoor meetings with some outdoor exercise is rejuvenating, and a great way to burn some calories before a business dinner.
5. If your hotel does not have a fitness facility, ask if they have a relationship with a nearby health club. Most hotels without fitness facilities have established a relationship with a club where hotel guests can go for free or for a nominal fee.
6. Pack resistance tubing and a jump rope and turn your room into a mini gym. Even a 20-minute routine including push-ups, crunches, squats, and lunges, will help maintain your fitness level while away.
7. Rather than a business meeting at breakfast, or cocktails at the end of the day, suggest talking while working out. Your business associate might be thrilled with the chance to get in his/her workout as well.
8. Be determined and committed to maintaining your fitness, but be flexible with your routine. Don’t allow your travels to be an excuse to stop working out, but recognize that even if you need to shorten your workout, some activity is always better than none.

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Article Tags: business travel, fitness, pleasure traveling



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Re: What is your biggest challenge? Today? - Staying healthy is important as I get very little done when I have the flu. I basically shut down for a week to recover properly and continue to work hard.
Re: What Do you Prefer More - Time or Money - [quote="TannyL":l9yb1lqm][quote="Alan Mater":l9yb1lqm] Hi Tanny, In my opinion time is more valuable than money. Can you have one without the other?[/quote:l9yb1lqm] Alan, I thought about it, and I came to the conclusion there are people who have money, but don't have time. They are workaholics, they love working, they love making tons of money, they may have time, but they are using it for more work and money making. If you ask them, they will say, they don't have time. They don't have time for family, they don't have time for friends, and parties (unless it is work related), they don't take time for themselves. I have a good friend she is working only to have a good time. She is usually finding a job, working 6 months, going on a trip, coming back, working 6 months and traveling again, etc. But as good as it sounds, she is 34 years old, and still living with her parents, she doesn't own a car, and the only thing she need her money for is her mobile phone. Traveling every 6 months looks good, but I rather pay my mortgage.[/quote:l9yb1lqm] I wouldn't want to be either of those scenarios. As much as we need money and depend on it, I could never work so much that I never have time for anything else, especially family. That's just sad if you ask me. Of course, the other scenario is sad as well. Traveling 6 months out of the year sounds quite enjoyable but not when you're still living at home with no car. In that case I'd rather work all year long and have a month's vacation time to spend for traveling.
Re: The Top 50 Productivity Blogs To Watch in 2010 - Thanks for that list Evan. I have bookmarked it to go through more carefully when I have some spare time. What you say here is so true, the biggest problem with working on the internet is that it is so easy to get side tracked. Staying focused is really the hard part. MichelleJ
Re: How to Stay Motivated - Staying motivated is definitely hard. Especially when things get overwhelming and there are no immediate results. This is my personal approach. 1) Use a big white dry-erase board / piece of paper. 2) Pen down everything you need to do or in the process of doing. Point forms with dates. No need for excessive details. 3) Schedule a definitive period of time to relax (i.e. for the next hour and a half) 4) Jump back to working starting with number 1 on the white board! The best way is stay motivated to be organized, re-group then jump back in!
Re: Rumor Has It! - Thanks been there since the late 70's when the market was IBM and Victor. Road the Victor while IBM went though 286's and 386's. Do a lot of cannibalization to keep my Victors going A year ago lost my workstation's hard drive and more recently my operating system due to lightning strikes. Have bought a few computers and modems due to lightning. Take me about a week to recover a hard-drive Lessons learned: regularly backup your programs and data When I grow up I hope to get a what u call it "Power Interuptus Device"


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