Five Simple Hotel Room Workout Ideas *

*This is a collaborative post.

When you’re travelling, it’s easy to let your fitness regime flounder. If you don’t have access to a gym or you aren’t familiar with the area, you might assume that you can’t work out anyway. Alternatively, if you’re going on holiday or taking a mini-break, you might decide you deserve some time off from your usual routine.

However, staying fit while you’re travelling is easier than you think and you’ll feel better so factoring some exercise into your trip.

No matter where you’re heading too, these simply hotel room exercises make it easy to maintain your fitness:

Push-Ups

Push-ups are a classic exercise that almost everyone can do. Simply lay flat on the floor, with your hands approximately shoulder-width apart and ensure your body is in a straight line from your head to your toes. Then use your arms to push your body up, before lowering yourself almost to the floor again.

Engage your core and glutes while performing push-ups and you’ll work out your abdominal muscles and glutes, as well as your pecs, shoulders and triceps.

If a full push up is a little too challenging, you can make it easier by resting your knees on the ground. Alternatively, experienced fitness buffs can make them harder by switching to lateral push up walks or feet-up push-ups.

Sit-ups

If you’ve yet to master the sit-up, now is the time to learn. Sit-ups build ab muscle, so they’re a great way to work your core and get the definition you’re after. However, it’s important to use the proper form if you want to maximise your results.

Lie on the ground, facing the ceiling, with your knees bent and your feet flat. Use your abs to lift your torso until you’re in a seated position. From here, use your abs to lower your upper body back down until you’re virtually touching the floor.

Remember – you need to use your ab muscles to move your body when you’re doing sit-ups, not your back, hip flexors or arms. Form is more important than quantity when you’re doing these types of exercises, so take the time to get it right.

Star Jumps

Start jumps, or jumping jacks, are a great way to get your heart racing and build up your cardio fitness. In fact, you’ll be amazed at how tiring just 60 seconds of star jumps can be! Depending on the soundproofing in your hotel, these can be a good option for when you’re travelling. If you’re situated on the ground floor, you can certainly factor them in to your travel workout plan!

Planks

Although planks look deceptively simple, they really do give your core a good workout. What’s more – you can do them virtually anywhere. To get started, lie down facing the ground. Then, use your toes and your elbows to hold your body up, making sure to maintain a straight line from head to toe.

Squeeze your thighs and glutes, as well as engaging your abs, to ensure you’re using the right muscles. Hold the pose for as long as you can. For beginners, 10 seconds is a good aim, but you can work your way up to a minute or longer once you’ve built up more strength.

Doorway Row

Doorway rows are a great exercise for your lats (the large muscle that connects your arms to your back) but they also train the trapezius and biceps too. Stand sideways in a doorway, so that you’re facing the doorframe. Grab hold of the doorframe and lean back until your arms are straight (be careful not to hit the other side of the frame!). From this position, use your arms and back to pull your body back to vertical.

For a more challenging version, use just one arm to perform doorway rows. Be aware, however, you will need a sturdy doorway in order to complete these exercises!

Keep Fit While You’re On The Road

As you can see, the exercises here don’t require any equipment. Instead, they rely on using your body weight to help build strength. Bodyweight exercises are a great option when you’re travelling because you don’t need to take anything with you, and they can be performed virtually anywhere.

However, there are many pieces of equipment that can be used to vary your hotel workouts. Resistance bands enable you to add weight to workouts and are small enough to transport in your hand luggage, for example.

With the right combination of exercises and some ingenuity, you’ll find that hotel workout are a great way to maintain – and even improve – your fitness levels.