Road Warrior

[Raziel]

Hi all. I've been lurking for a bit and receiving the newsletter since September. After a few off-again, on-again bouts with the beginner boydweight routine, I've found my niche self-crafted program/plan and it's been great. A few things about my situation:

 

- I'm 28, 5'11" and 180 lbs. Definitely had been progressing toward the "skinny fat" realm before I turned things around and decided to build some muscle and change my diet

- I travel for 48 weeks out of the year for my job. We move around via bus and stay in hotels all over the USA, Canada and Japan so being consistent with routines proves an interesting life challenge. Whereas travel for most people is special, for me it is the norm, and being in a home, able to cook my own meals and go to the gym is a rather special treat

 

I'm here to look for other tips and tricks that other travelers may have discovered. Steve's article about his big trip from a few years ago and maintaining consistent exercise is very good, and I'm planning to go into a little more detail here with certain things that probably affect those of you who travel for your job a lot more than the average bear. Perhaps we can share tips and tricks and come out the better for it!

 

Firstly, goals: packing on some muscle, being stronger, reducing that ever-encroaching beer gut, and feeling better about getting up in the morning.

 

Resources: Nerdfitness, Couch to 5k, 100 Pushups, James Clear. A few years ago I did couch to 5k and 100 pushups and burned out pretty hard on both by about week 5. I think the problem is the emphasis placed on certain exercises rather than a more comprehensive approach to total fitness and body movements.

 

And honestly I think both of these programs assume a level of fitness that is a little higher than your typical couch potato looking to get started, and can have the effect of burning out newbies who don't realize what they're getting into, and simply assume anybody should be able to complete these. I know I thought something was "wrong with me" when I couldn't keep up the demands of all those pushups and running in just 4 short weeks without feeling like death. A more striking recent discovery for me was that I could do a lot more exercise, in a shorter amount of time, in ADDITION to both of those programs and yet feel less overwhelmed and less tired by being more efficient with it and just breaking it down in a way that I could manage.

 

Here are my habits, roughly laid out by category. Feel free to dissect and critique, and offer your own insight or modifications to these ideas.

 

Cooler: I keep dairy, vegetables, berries, hummus and a few other things like kombucha and kimchi in a cooler. I change the ice out regularly. The Playmate from Walmart is a nice cheap option that has held up. I go through phases with the cooler and once in a while if we're in a decent city, I eschew it in favor of good restaurants for a few days. That presents certain risks like cooking with trans fats (there's really no way for you to know, but it's probably happening at many places) but it's also a nice break from the constant struggle to keep fresh, perishable foods in your system.

 

I'm not a big fan of Greek yogurt but I like to eat it because of the protein to sugar ratio being great. However I recently found my new favorite plain yogurt and it's at many grocery stores all over the country: Mountain High. Pretty high protein content and it's not too runny.

 

Dry food bag: I keep a bag with various nuts, carrots, sweet peppers (those pre-packaged bags you can get at the grocery store), dark chocolate (Green & Black's 85%), seeds (usually pumpkin), peanut butter, almond butter, and some granola (Bear naked is my favorite brand). Carrots and sweet peppers do not require refrigeration so this is a good way to save on cooler space and still eat very healthy. I like to dip the carrots in the almond butter and the peppers in the hummus.

 

Also (and this is magic), whenever you see a Target, pick up one or two jars of their Raw Mixed Nuts. The brand is Archer Farms. It's a mix of cashews, almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts and pistachios. Raw, unsalted. AMAZING nutrition. I am pounding handful after handful right now in my hotel room. Given the tremendous difficulty of finding unsalted anything at grocery stores (because you're going to get a ton of salt in your restaurant food), this is a real gem at one of the most ubiquitous grocery store chains out there. DO IT.

 

Eating out: Thai restaurants and diners. Seriously. These are almost everywhere now. Thai and Pho in particular seem to have exploded in popularity since I started this job in 2009, so all the better. At Denny's you can make this grand slam: 2 eggs, bacon strips, sausage, and a side of avocado. If you just did a workout, add some oatmeal too. Most Thai restaurants allow you to get more veggies instead of rice, or to sub in brown rice for more fiber. They also typically have some kind of chicken and lemongrass option with veggies. I was able to add extra veggies (broccoli, spinach and carrots) last night for just 2 bucks. I like to scan the menu and pick the curry dish with the best green vegetable mix. They are almost always willing to accommodate a more Paleo version for a few extra bucks.

 

Also, Chipotle/Qdoba. It's basically the same thing. You can get the burrito bowl, hold the rice (or not if you've just worked out or you're running soon), add fajitas and guacamole, and go to town all in a quick lunch stop. Panera Bread is another good option for lunch if you're surrounded by a sea of chain fast food places. Soup, cobb salad, and sub an apple on the side for the bread.

 

Equipment: I currently use a pull-up bar, the perfect push-up traveler version, 25 and 40 lb. dumbells, and a pillow for planks. I've found the perfect push-up is good for my wrists and makes the pushups quite a great deal more difficult for me. There are many instances in which some or all of this equipment is rendered useless. For example, the doors in the current hotel are all too wide for the pull-up bar and have no molding on which to hang it. The carpet here is too deep for the perfect push-up base to swivel. It's also raining hard and using the dumbbells outside the bus would get them all rusty. But I make do and modify the workout accordingly. Yesterday I found a set of stairs that I can do pull-ups under, as long as a buddy is watching to make sure nobody is about to walk down them and step on my fingers! Just doing regular pushups today, and I'll use my suitcase loaded with stuff for my rows.

 

Routine: I've found that working out 6 days a week, focusing on upper body movements for 3 days, and lower body movements for the alternate days, works great for me. Saturdays are off and I just make sure I get a nice walk in. Upper body days this week have me doing pushups, pullups, wall handstands, overhead press, rows and dumbbell curls. Lower body days have me doing prisoner squats, split squats, lunges, reverse lunges, planks and running intervals. This way I get the core in almost every day. I want to give my feet more time to adjust to the Vibrams before I go into full-on interval sprints to avoid any undue injury, so I'm once again using the Couch to 5k program to help me work up to running a few miles a few times a week. I'm still in the training phase with many of these exercises so I'm focused on form. It's week 5 of getting back into it and thanks to keeping a detailed calendar of my progress, I haven't wavered this time.

 

Finding gyms: typically we stay in the same area for no more than one or two nights maximum. Sometimes we have several days off in a given area, or we have jobs in the same area for up to a week. In these cases I do research ahead of time and call around to local gyms to see what kind of deal they will cut me. There are some other fitness nerds on the job with me so they can cut a group deal. For example, a couple of weeks ago we were in the same town for 5 days. I called two gyms and the second one gave us full access for the week for $20 each. Not too bad, as many places want up to $20 a day. I think of it as paying for the use of the pull-up bar and various grips, the bench press and squat rack, the dumbbells with more weight variation, and the treadmills if there is inclement weather. $4 a day to get unlimited access to deadlifts, bench press, cleans and squats? Sounds like a deal to me! I'll interrupt and make regular replacements to my routine with gym access. For example, I'll leave out the overhead press and regular bodyweight squats in favor of the power clean and squat rack at the gym.

 

After struggling to keep up the beginner bodyweight routine with running 3 days a week last Fall, splitting things up like this still wipes me out, keeps my appetite up, and makes me more motivated to rest and keep to proper form. I believe in a detailed dynamic warmup, focusing on big movements at all times, staying hydrated, and keeping to a moderate intermittent fasting period (for me it's roughly noon to 9pm). Ever since cutting out drinking, my figure has changed, my motivation has gone up and I've had a lot more money to spend on the nutritious food that I need.

 

Anyways, that's my story with fitness this time around. I really hope to stick with it and I think with the help of the community and Steve's newsletters, it's going to become a lifetime habit. James Clear's succinct newsletter is also a good motivator with sticking to habits. Does anybody else have tried-and-true travel fitness methods that work for you? Please let me know! I'm always on the lookout for other tricks to keep things going forward while traveling.

[ARock10]

Hey! I can imagine it's quite hard to stay in shape when you're on the road 48 weeks a year.  That's a lot!  It sounds like you've pretty much got your diet/nutrition figured out and I like your idea of contacting gyms ahead of time to cut a deal.  I use the Nerd Fitness blog and James Clear's blog to keep me motivated, too.  If you're interested in the challenges, there is a new one starting in about 2 weeks on 4/14.  You could hammer out a few fitness/diet goals to work on for 6 weeks.  Hope this helps in some way.

http://jamesclear.com/fit-travel

[Raziel]

Thanks, ARock! I'm glad you're hip to that blog as well. James told me he and Steve are good friends and I can really tell by their writing and philosophies how they have rubbed off on each other idea-wise. It's good to keep good company like that and I hope to get to know some of you and share strategies and stories to stay motivated. Those challenges seem great. I am currently in week 5 of my own personal 10ish week challenge so that's great timing! As I get further along my current program spreadsheet, my goals shift and change according to how far I have come. This appropriately
 
Everybody's mileage varies but for me, the 5 or 6 week mark is where I tend to break down on habits and start to get tired or fold a little on a given program. It's the middle of week 5 right now and I'm feeling that familiar need to muster some deep courage to keep things going. Despite always being on the road, I understand completely how a change in situation can derail a workout plan. It usually happens during any trip we do overseas, where partying takes place of sleeping enough! This happened to me in Japan last November and on a cruise ship last spring. Going to Japan again in two weeks so it will be a true test of willpower to keep motivation pushing me forward through my 10 days there...
 
I would say I'm not even close to having things figured out, but that's because I have my handy-dandy Open Office Calc spreadsheet to keep me on task no matter what happens with my mind on a given day. One day I wrote a ton of exercises down for the hell of it and realized I could do them without getting too much soreness, so that became the new normal. Before this spreadsheet, I was never able to stick to anything consistent or chartable. Duh, should've listened to Steve when he said keep track of EVERYTHING.