Best Gym Equipment for Travel

I previously wrote about workouts you can do in your hotel room, for when you’re traveling out of town and want to get some exercise in. That page has a great warm-up that you can start with to get your heart pumping and your muscles loose, as well as a number of bodyweight exercises you can perform to work on your strength and endurance.

But bodyweight training can only go so far – to get a real pump going, you need more resistance than your body allows. If you have room in your travel bag, here are some great pieces of travel workout equipment you should bring with you to get a solid workout in while on the road.

Best Travel Fitness Gear

Here are a few choice pieces of equipment that you can throw into your bag that will allow you do to both strength training and cardiovascular activity so your workouts don’t go on hiatus while you travel. With these in tow, there’s no longer any excuse to miss your workouts.

Jump Rope

The beauty of this is the great cardio workout you can squeeze in, as well some nice plyometrics exercising for your calves, and it is such a small item that it should be able to fit easily into your travel bag. With this piece of equipment, you may (or probably) need to get outside to use considering the limitation of ceiling height when indoors.

My favorite product in this category is this Survival and Cross Jump Rope on Amazon. It’s very affordable, has length adjustment, and has great ball bearings to make it whip around real smoothly.

Resistance Bands

When you want to get some weight training in, obviously it’s not feasible to carry some dumbbells in your luggage. That’s where resistance bands come in as a great alternative. This set of resistance bands on Amazon is my favorite and weighs less than 3 pounds and packs easily into my bag. When used properly you can get some great strength training and anaerobic exercise for your biceps, triceps – basically any muscle group depending on how you utilize them (there’s plenty of videos on the internet for different exercises to try to target certain muscle groups.

Hand Gripper

Besides taking this with you when you travel, this is a great piece of equipment you could have on your desk or on the couch to really burn your forearms and improve your grip strength. These are crucial muscles that will help with performing other exercises, so it’s best to keep these muscles strong. My favorite in this category is this one from IronMind.

No Excuses Anymore!

With any or all of these in your travel bag, you don’t have an excuse to not get a workout in when you are on the road. (Sorry if that bums you out!). All of these are relatively affordable (click the links for each above to see pricing) and pack easily into your luggage. Combine these with a little bit of a warm-up and some bodyweight exercises and it will be like you’ve never missed a day at the gym.

And if you can hold off until holiday time, you might be able to score some of this equipment in Black Friday fitness deals!