If you’re into fitness and trying to keep your body in the best shape possible like me, I know that you hate to miss a workout. It’s especially tough to fit workouts in when you’re traveling. Some hotels have a fitness room, but most of them are far from adequate in terms of facilities and equipment. So how do you get some exercise in when you’re away from home and staying at a hotel? A hotel room workout! Try these workouts you can do in your room (and home, as well!) in 20 minutes or less!
Best Hotel Room Exercises – Minimal Space Needed!
Since you’re going to be lacking equipment, obviously, a lot of these are related to bodyweight movements as well as cardio exercises. All of these require almost no space to perform and no equipment (and if you want to do some weight lifting, you can improvise with whatever items you have around the hotel room).
Warm-Up
First, you need to get your blood flowing. There are a number of things that you can do, the key is to spend at least 5 minutes really getting your heart pumping, warming up your muscles, and getting limber.
A few of the things that you can do in the hotel that requires virtually no space is jumping jacks, mountain climbers (one of the best exercises to lose belly fat), burpees, high knees, leg swings, arm swings, core twists, and other variations. Spend 30-60 seconds on each of these in succession and you’ll feel your heart racing.
Exercises
Now that your blood is pumping, it’s time to give your muscles a pump. There are so many different bodyweight exercises that require no equipment and provide strength and endurance training for your muscles. Try these in your hotel room:
- Push-Ups for our chest and triceps
- Tricep Dips for, obviously, your triceps as well as your back and shoulders
- Squats for your core, butt, quads, and hamstrings
- Hip Hinge to work your core and lower back
- Leg Lifts to target your glutes, core, and hip flexors
- Regular Planks for your abs and lower back
- Side Planks to target your abs, particularly the obliques
- Crunches for more abdominal work
- Heel Raises to give your calves a workout
For each of these exercises, as much as time allows, try to do 2 or 3 sets of 12 repetitions. If you are crunched for time, you can do half of these exercises one day (perhaps the upper body exercises) and the other half the next day, or split this workout into two workouts in the morning and evening.
The key is to do something rather than nothing. Just because you’re not around your home gym, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t things you can do to get your heart rate going, raise your metabolism, and give your muscles a workout. As mentioned above, this doesn’t even necessarily have to be a “hotel room workout”, as this can be done anytime when you want to get some work in and don’t have a lot of space or time. If you are traveling with your swolemate, you can make this workout fun and competitive as well.
For a video of many of the exercises listed above, check out this video of a hotel room workout provided by Huffington Post.