Travel Fit: Why Your Body and Brain Need Exercise On-the-Go

Exercise can be the first thing to go when we’re on-the-go, but it could be to our detriment. Science shows that when we’re away from home is precisely when we need to be crushing our workouts the most.

Exercise helps regulate our minds and bodies in the face of the potentially harmful effects of travel flux. After all, while travelling has many benefits, jumping between different time zones and dramatically changing our diets can wreak havoc on our systems, causing everything from headaches to wonky menstrual cycles to constipation and even changes to personality.

Thankfully, there’s HIIT  — a form of exercise that’s seemingly exercise made for travel.

Unlike many other types of training that require a laundry list of gear and equipment, HIIT necessitates nothing aside from willpower and a few minutes. You can do it at home or on a beach in Cabo or a hostel room in Dublin. You don’t need dumbbells or barbells or specific workout gear or even shoes: you can do it with nothing but your own bodyweight, while in nothing but your underwear if you want.

This simplicity is often what attracts people to high-intensity interval training. What keeps people training is HIIT’s ability to keep delivering fast, noticable gains  — and to keep getting these gains, people bring on reinforcements.

Gear On-the-Go

Anyone who’s ever smashed out 100 burpees or jump squats can attest to the fact that your bodyweight can  — and will — provide you with a killer HIIT workout. However, for people who have been HIITing it regularly and who want to push past plateaus, challenge their bodies and keep seeing those measurable, motivating results, gear is non-negotiable.

The more resistance your body has to work against, the more muscle it builds, and the more muscle you have, the more fat you burn. This is why you need your workout to evolve with your fitness level, and it’s why so many of our BodyRockers stock up on goodies from our store.

Challenger bars, dumbbells, kettlebells and balance trainers are all great ways to amp up your workout so you can keep sweating your way to enhanced fitness, but it’s hard to fit a barbell in your backpack. What you need is compact equipment: equipment that can help you stay on track, even when you’re miles or continents away from home.

You don’t need a lot. Here’s what we bring when we travel:

Booty Bands:  These beauties slip into the nooks and crannies any suitcase or backpack. Break them out to counteract the long hours spent sitting on your butt enroute. As their name suggests, Booty Bands will help you sculpt a more pert and perky behind.

Core Bands: You can fit this conditioning gear into your backpack or back pocket. We love core bands because they not only provide extra resistance for core training, but they can also be used to enhance stretching  — and if you’ve been stewing in the cramped quarters of coach seating for a few hours, you’ll need to stretch.

Sandbags: Sandbags are our go-to for heavier resistance when we’re travelling. By allowing us to fill the bags to our desired resistance level and then empty them when it’s time to pack up again, this ingenious piece of equipment is the perfect way to ensure we don’t lose our edge when we’re away from home.