Strength training on the road

If you’re looking for an excuse to skip your weight training workout, vacations and business trips won’t cut it. You can keep your muscles strong no matter where you go, whether your destination is Caribou, Maine, or the Mongolian desert.
Of course, you may not always find a health club with 16 shoulder machines and aromatherapy baths. While touring Micronesia, Suzanne worked out at Yap Island’s only gym — a tin shack where the locals hoist rusty barbells while chewing betel nut, a mild narcotic that stains your teeth red. In Nairobi, she lifted weights at a club where staff members had to boil water on a stove in the weight room because the water wasn’t safe to drink. The bottom line: You can always make do.
Strength training on the road is well worth the effort. Even fitting in one short workout a week can help you maintain the strength you’ve worked so hard to build. Here are some tips for getting in a strength training workout away from home:

• Book a hotel with a gym, if possible. Some hotel gyms have facilities that rival those at regular health clubs, including personal trainers, towel service, and massage. And these days, even many of the less posh hotel gyms offer a decent array of free weights and weight training machinery.
• Look for a gym in the neighborhood. If your hotel doesn’t have a gym, ask the concierge, or simply open up the phone book and look under “health club” or “fitness.” Expect to pay $15 to $20. Some upscale Los Angeles and New York clubs charge as much as $35 or more.
• Stick to free weight exercises and machines that you recognize. If you’re in a gym that’s foreign to you, unless you ask someone on staff to help you, this isn’t the time to test whether you have a knack for figuring out how weight training contraptions work. When you work out away from your home club, expect to sign a waiver essentially saying that any torn muscle, broken bone, or smashed toenail you sustain is your fault and yours alone. By the way, one of the best reasons to find a local gym has nothing to do with your muscles. “You get to meet the locals and find out about the least crowded beaches, and the best place to go for a beer,” says Alec Boga, an avid traveler from California, who’s lifted weights in Thailand, Costa Rica, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Fiji, just to name a few countries. “The equipment might be good or bad, but you just ad-lib and enjoy talking to the people.”
• Pack an exercise band. If you have no access to weight equipment, you can perform dozens of exercises with a single band, which takes up about as much space as your travel toothbrush. Shirley never travels without exercise tubing and a stretch strap. See Chapter 24 for band exercises.
• Lift your own body weight as a last resort.

If you get stuck without even a band, you can do equipment-free exercises such as push-ups, triceps dips, crunches, back extensions, squats, and lunges. Shirley creates outdoor circuit workouts in local parks, combining walking with stops at trees, stairs, and park benches for push-ups, dips, lunges, and squats for a workout that combines aerobic training and toning. Outdoor workouts are a great way to see the sights and experience local flavor, enjoy the outdoors, and keep up your fitness program.