How to actually keep fit while travelling

You did it, you’re locked in, you’re finally seeing some progress with your strength, you’re seeing some definition come through and you’re feeling more mobile than ever. Then bang, it’s time to go on that trip you’ve had planned. And suddenly you’re faced with a decision. Either kill all the momentum you had, watch the progress you’re making, slip away and return to square one when you get back, or sacrifice all the good food and drink and relaxation that makes travel worth doing in the first place. But what if there was a third option? What if you had a system that you could pack up and take with you that meant you not only kept making all the same progress on the road that you were at home, but actually enjoy your trip more because of it? And I’m not just talking about positive thinking. I mean, what if you had a system that actually improved your mood and energy, that fixed your appetite and allowed you to enjoy all the food and drink you wanted guilt-free without the risk of blowing out and gaining fat and could even save you money all while taking less than 40 minutes a week to get done no matter where you are in the world.
How would that change your experience of taking time away? Because that’s exactly what I’m going to share with you right now in this video. Over the last 10 years, I’ve taken my fitness system across the globe, but testing everything from really strict training and diet regimens to throwing caution to the wind and just about everything in between. And having spent the last two months travelling in South America and Europe, I can finally say that I have honed in a system that I am really happy with. It has sustained my progress, it has improved my overall experience of travel massively. It’s a game changer. So I have some thoughts on busting share. I want to break this video down into context, looking at the big picture and then dive into the specifics. You can apply yourself to training and diet and strategy so that whether you’re about to go on a 12 month backpacking trip or just have a few weeks away for work, you have the roadmap that you need.
Before we get into specifics, let’s talk big picture context here. If you’re going away for less than a month at a time and less than a couple of months across the year, I don’t think you really need to worry about maintaining your routine at all. I’m still going to show you how because you can compare the ratios of that sort of a timeframe to how much time you spend in normal routine at home. It should be a blip on the radar that makes no difference. And if you are worried about it negatively affecting your gains, I think that’s all the more reason that you should take the time off to go and prove to yourself that A, taking such a short amount of time off really has no impact on your results. You come back after that and pick up where you left off, and B, you might realise that you’re holding onto a routine purely for the security of it and not actually making any significant levels of progress when you’re in it.
And either way, this is a really important lesson to learn. You should be making such consistent, predictable progress when you’re home in routine that you know a small break of a couple weeks to go enjoy yourself. Travelling is going to be a very short gap in your overall timeline progression and you can treat it more as a D load and the chance to recover. And if not, this is your sign to review what you’re doing and the efficacy of it. The longer your trip, the more relevant this stuff becomes. But I think even more than that, having said this about time off being good, if you are confident with your routine at home and if you are making reliable progress with your strength, with your body composition, with your mobility, I think knowing how to pack up your routine and take it with you wherever you go is an extremely freeing position to be in and learning to do this also improves your process at time because it shows you how easy the basics are to get done that drive all the results you’re getting anyway.
If you can fit it around travel, you can fit it around literally any routine at home which makes you feel unstoppable. And so whichever camp you’re currently in, I think travel is overall a really good thing for fitness and for your routine in general. If you don’t see it as an obstacle, but actually a stimulus for improvement, much like training is a stimulus for our bodies, thankfully it’s a lot easier than it’s made out to be. Training makes you feel awesome, and I think if you need to take time off training, you’re probably trying to do too much generally in your routine when you are working out for 40 minutes a week listening to your body, at least the way that I do it and teach it, it’s very sustainable. And I’ve realised from experimenting with removing it, just how good it makes you feel, ignoring all the benefits to continued strength gain, body composition, et cetera.
So show you how I get it down the road. There’s basically two levels to this. If you are half committed to this travel training process or you’re already on the road and haven’t prepped, you can get it done for zero effort and prep and cost. Almost every CT I’ve been to in the world, you can find outdoor workout gyms. You can literally just search for this in Google Maps and you’ll find plenty of examples. I found ’em across China, Southeast Asia, south America, Europe, Australia, and provided you’ve got a decent day, these things will allow you to train your entire upper body. So you can train your one arm, chin up training on the chin up bars and then just drop down to one that’s lower and you need leg assistance. And then the other three movements you can train on the parallel bars. So a handstand pushup, you can put your feet on the bars, same with your pledge pushups and then rows you can row from underneath or find a lower bar like this where you can put your feet on the ground.
The movements all work exactly the same as they do on the rings. They can just be sometimes harder to grip. So be prepared for some extra forearm training that leaves legs. And so again, for this zero cost zero prep version, you can actually do a pretty effective form of both single leg squats and Nordic curls just using a partner. So if you have a human being who’s willing to either train with you or support your gains, you can use their body weight and the floor to do single leg squats, spotting with your other foot and then you can get them to anchor your ankles for Nordic curls. All this training is exactly the same as normal. You just have to be a bit creative with how you set it up. This is the ghetto version. I prefer a bit more of a premium secure experience with my training even when travelling.
The obvious advantage to body weight training is that your gymnastics rings fit in a backpack. My 28 mil wooden rings from iron edge weight in about 1.4 kilos. So even with my very minimalist travel setup, these fit in my backpack, I take them every hour. You can string these up on a tree and overhead beam all at the workout park and literally get 10 out of 10 upper body training done. And these workout parks are a great opportunity to explore a city, see some new places. I got a really stunning view from this place just outside of Lisbon, again, weather providing and for legs, one of the most high value investments you’ll have make your body, you can literally just buy a gym pass once a week and get your leg training done as per normal. I’ve just figured out on this trip a brilliant supplement for the weight vest loaded single squats is to simply use two dumbbells.
So I’m replacing my 60 kilo set of weight vest with two 30 kilo dumbbells here. And again, just like with the partner weighted version, just spot yourself through with your other leg. I almost prefer these to the weight vest ones. You can get a really deep stretch at the bottom and I find it really easy to push very, very hard. So those are brilliant. And then while you’re at the gym, you can set yourself up for Nordic curls. There’s various ways you can do this, but the easiest is you get a Smith machine or load up a barbell and a squat rack, really heavy, put a bench under it and then you can do Nordics like this, really secure. Again, this is 10 out of 10 set up to train this movement. Total cost for this routine, assuming you’re doing the bougie version, is logging your rings around with you very lightweight and spending somewhere between 10 to $40 a week on gym passes.
Depending on the country, it doesn’t need to take more than 40 minutes as it would normally. Plus you’ve got a mission to walk around a new place, see the sites In terms of split, I just keep my routine exactly the same as normal. So three sessions a week, push and pull one day legs, another day at the gym, push and pull another day. But remember, you can split this however you want as normal. If you wanted to get all done in one day, you could just get a gym pass, go bang them all out there, you’re done. Don’t have to worry about it for another week and you stay on track and you’re still going to make most of the progress that you could possibly make to who, what works. We’re not trying to optimise here, we’re trying to get training done while travelling, so whichever way is the most enjoyable and has the least friction for you, go with that.
If you’re on some crazy adventure and can’t train for a couple of weeks, feel free to come back and smash everything when it’s possible. Again, a really big benefit to having a simple routine is that it’s flexible. It can adapt to you and that’s the point. Training should be improving your experience of life as cardio has never been an easier question to answer. Just walk, travel for me is the easiest time in the world to get steps in. It’s how I explore any new region or city that I visit. Don’t worry about going and hitting an exercise bike. Just get out there, explore the world. It should be a very easy time to get activity in. Okay, so diet, just like with training, I’ve experimented throwing this to the wind and have again decided that I’m not going to do that anymore. The reason is that getting enough protein in just makes you feel so good and as I will show you, is incredibly easy to get done no matter where you are and will likely save you money.
Hitting your baseline level of protein proves your energy. It makes your mood better, makes you feel satiated and strong. And I really notice if I don’t hit my normal amount, I just don’t have as much zest as a human to want to go and do things. It also means obviously that you recover from the training that you’re doing and get the most out of that, which makes sense to do. And the best part is that it means your appetite works properly, which means you don’t want to overeat When you’re hitting your baseline level of protein, your body is satisfied. A much lower level of calories than otherwise would be meaning you can just listen to your appetite, which is so powerful when you’re travelling and trying to enjoy the food and drink you want without restriction. If you’ve just hit your protein that day, it means you can do that.
Eat and drink as much as you physically want to and know that your body weight and composition are going to pretty much stay the same. You could not worry about any protein and then go and eat and drink out and still be restricting yourself and try not to overdo it and still be hungry and still be overeating and gaining fat. So add to this, the fact that you’re going to feel better anyway, and I think you can see the reason why for me it’s now a no brainer. So the way I get this done, a hundred grammes at lunch, same as normal, prioritise getting this early and then the rest of the day is so easy. I’ll just get my protein in as my first priority during the day when I’m walking around exploring. And then when I want to go out for dinner, I can literally eat what I want, try all the local food, street food, snacks, desserts, eat to my heart’s content, and I just maintain my physique.
So again, there’s tears to doing this. If you want the minimal effort, minimal cost. Most places you can find really cheap protein shakes, protein yoghourts. In Portugal where I’m now, these Euro pros are two euros each and get you 25 grammes of protein and tastes great. So that’s the easiest. The next level of effort is to make yourself a picnic so you can get things like processed meats, cheeses, high protein yoghourts, and it should be very easy to get a hundred grammes in a meal combining those things. Just people more happy to eat, but that’s something you can enjoy. And the most optimal and nutritious version would be to eat animal proteins, meats, if you’re that way inclined. Again, if you’re vegetarian or vegan, apply the principles here, but for optimal unprocessed whole food, you could either cook in a kitchen, make a steak, make burgers.
If you’re somewhere where that quantity of meat is afford, we can just go out and eat it. We were just in Argentina and Uruguay eating barbecue every day. It was very easy to get enough from a single meal and then another hack. If you’re in a pinch like in an airport, you can always stoop as low as fast food outlets like McDonald’s Quad Quarter Pounder sorted me out the other day when I had a full day of transit and literally needed nutrition. And you can get something like that for a very reasonable price and just eat the meat. Kind of reemphasize how much this will improve your general experience of travel day to day. And there are a lot of ways to get it done. If there’s other hacks you’ve discovered, let me know in the comments. Total cost for this, it’s probably going to save you money.
And the reason for that is rather than wanting to fill up on lower quality, higher cost restaurant foods or snacks, all want to be eating those expensive high protein options. When you do eat out, you get your nutrition sorted earlier in the day, very cheap, and then later when you go out to eat, you can choose whatever you want from the menu. It’s going to be a lot cheaper than trying to buy a huge steak and you hit your threshold of satisfaction way soon as you don’t need to go on juice as much. And then finally, strategy. I think this point should be fairly obvious, but I think it’s worth making, especially if you’re not at the level of body fat that you want to be at yet and to cut to the chase. I think there is no point trying to cut calories whilst you’re travelling.
Think about the timeline of your year. The model that I use and teach my students once you are at a body composition that you are reasonably happy with is no more than three months, 12 weeks of cutting out of the year, of hitting a calorie deficit and actively trying to lose body fat as your priority. That means every year you’ve got nine months where your goal is to just be eating to appetite and focusing on getting stronger and fueling muscle gain. And so that’s nine months that it makes a lot of sense to be lighting and you travel up with, if you’ve got 12 weeks to be dialled in, nailing your calories, hitting a deficit, making sure you don’t overeat. Why would plan to do that while you’re travelling? I just see this as utterly counterproductive, especially when all that travel food could be doing so much for your progress when you’re in a gain strength, accumulation normal period.
But what if you’re not lean yet and you’re really trying to drop that body fat and the travel’s coming up before you’re ready to go into a gain phase? Like I said at the start, if you feel worried about stopping cutting, then I think taking a break from it’s probably going to do you good. If you’ve been trying to lose fat for over 12 weeks and I was coaching you, then I would tell you to stop and take a break for at least a couple of weeks to allow things to reset hormonally, behaviorally and just enjoy yourself for a bit before you dive into another period of actual effective fat loss. If it’s not working and you’re in this limbo of trying to cut and not losing half a kilo of wheat consistently, and then you’re worried about taking a break, then that again, that’s the point is that you should have the break and then come back and figure out how to actually make the fat loss process work whilst you’re travelling is not the time to be learning that because there are so many other variables at play.
The fat loss isn’t productive to travel and travel’s not productive with fat loss. So when you’re home in routine, get the result and then when you’re travelling, enjoy yourself. Enjoy the fat loss that you’ve done, enjoy the leaner body composition that you’ve gained and realise when you get home you can plan another period of that and get to even more exciting levels with it when you’re home losing fat, half a kilo a week minimum until you lean. If that’s not what’s happening, then we need to revise your process. So if you’re about to hit the road, I hope this gives you some confidence and a plan of attack. These strategies are not much, they don’t take much time or effort, but they have a massive impact on your physical health and progression. And there’s a reason that being in that state also feels great for your energy, emotions, wellbeing.
This is obviously all just a more streamlined, adaptable version of what you’re already doing at home, if you’re getting results, which is effective training, adequate daily protein intake, and then the strategic management of your calorie intake long term. If you need help with any of this, that’s what we do. Link below, you can learn more there. I can honestly say that training in different places and enjoying local food to my stomach’s content are some of the best moments I’ve enjoyed whilst travelling. So I hope this inspires some of you to realise that it’s okay and can be very easy to do the same. If you’ve got questions or want more depth on anything, let me know. Chat soon.