Field notes · Busy dad life
Fitness while travelling for work: a simple hotel-room plan
Work travel is where good habits go to die. Late flights, conference food, a minibar and a bed that is not yours. You will not have your best week on the road. The goal is to not undo the last month.
Dai Manuel · Coach Moose · Vancouver
The fifteen-minute room workout
No gym needed. Five rounds of ten squats, ten push-ups, ten reverse lunges each leg and a thirty-second plank. Done in fifteen minutes next to the bed. If you are wrecked, do two rounds. Two rounds is still a streak.
Then walk. Take the stairs, walk to dinner, take a call on your feet. Walking is the easiest thing to keep on the road.
Food, drink and sleep
At every meal find the protein first and build around it. Go easy on the free bar and the late dinner, because both wreck sleep, and poor sleep makes every other decision worse the next day.
Keep your normal bedtime where you can. Sleep is the thing travel steals most, and it is the one that matters most for how you feel when you get home.
Common questions
- How do I handle time zones?
- Get outside in morning daylight at your destination and keep caffeine to the morning. Light is the strongest signal for resetting your body clock.
- Is it okay to skip training on a trip?
- Missing a full session is fine. Missing everything for a week breaks the habit. Keep a minimum, even ten minutes, so you come home still moving.
Sources
- CDC, Jet lag (Yellow Book)
- The 2% Solution podcast archive, episodes on travel and routines