Staying Fit When on the Road

Keeping fit when on the road can be a struggle, even in the best of times. Whether you’re going for work or pleasure, it can be easy to forget about your own health with ‘easy walks’ in a department store being the only form of exercise you do, if you call that exercise.

With the modern industrialised world becoming more and more immobile due to hoards of people working information jobs in offices, this promotes obesity and its related diseases down the track. This can even be worse when travelling overseas on business trips, when the last thing you want to think about is how many push ups you’re doing, or what you’re dead lift max was last time. Hence, it’s imperative to maintain a schedule to keep fit when travelling in order to prevent that middle section from expanding, and becoming another statistic.

It can often be difficult finding a gym, or health club in a foreign country, particularly one that has a different language, living standards and city structure to what you’re used to. You’ll ask yourself – why should I waste my time finding a gym when I can do some fitness in the comfort of my own hotel?

The answer to this lies in performing HIIT – High Intensity Interval Training. This is a series of high intensity, rapid bursts of body weighted movements, intended to get your heart rate up, and has been scientifically proven to encourage what is known as the “afterburn” effect, or better known as EPOC – i.e. Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption. Without bogging you down with the nitty gritty, it’s essentially the body’s ability to continually burn calories after you’ve exercised. And common sense informs us that to lose weight, one must burn more calories then consumed. Hence HIIT promotes this.

Got your attention now? Great. You may be asking, “So, give me an example of HIIT?” OK, well there is one recommended routine I know, and it’s called the M100’s. I found this out by watching a YouTube video of Mike Chang (Six Pack Short Cuts fame) who demonstrated this, which should take 5-7 minutes, all in the comfort of your home.

Here it is:

3 sets of:

10 Burpees

10 Mountain Clmbers

10 jumping squats

Then you finish with 10 Burpees.

This routine will definitely get your heart rate up to the max, and by the end of it you will definitely be very sweaty and hot. In fact, with HIIT, it has been proven to be more efficient at fat burning then steady state cardio, such as jogging.

So, it’s a no brainer folks. Why waste 40 minutes of steady state jogging, when you can do few exercises in a couple of minutes, and with better results. Sounds like you’re in? Good, then YouTube “HIIT” and implement this in your weekly workouts.

Yours in Health,

Richard