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What No Gym Train Any Where Any Time
04.06.08Excuses, I have heard them all…
Everything from “my wife didn’t wash my workout clothes” to “my dog ate my trainers”. All used to avoid doing a workout or even starting an exercise plan in the first place. But the one I here the most from the busy professional relates to lack of facilities…
“I travel a lot, so I cannot always get to a gym to do a workout”
My clients know better than to pull this one on me! Yes, lack of facilities does present limitations to your “normal” exercise program. Your travel schedule and location mean access to good quality gym facilities are often limited. Your training will lack consistency and your progress will be slow, especially when you travel every third week, or
a month away at a time!
“There is no gym close to my home or work place”
Most new office buildings are actually making provisions for fitness facilities, even if they are somewhat limited in some cases. As it happens the gym i spend the majority of my time in is based in the basement of a new office complex. A perfect place to fit in a fast workout during lunch, just before or just after work too.
Lack of facilities is not the legitimate excuse you may think it is. You can achieve as good a workout if not a more advanced workout WITHOUT any equipment than if you had a huge gym with every machine you can think of. There are many exercises that can be done outside of the gym environment. In fact you’ll find the use of those fancy, expensive looking machines in the gym is fairly limited, and whilst they are great for those not knowing what to do, they may not be the best use of your training time.
Bodyweight training however is massively underrated as a method of training, yet it is possible to get a superior workout using just your body weight as the resistance. In many situations most gym goers are using external resistance unnecessarily.
For example performing the perfect bodyweight squat, lunge, push up or chin up will give you much more of a workout than any machine you’ll find in the gym. Add some small, inexpensive pieces of equipment such as a stability ball, exercise mat and set of small dumbbells for exercises to be done at home, then your exercise choices are multiplied almost infinitely!
One particularly well travelled client was adamant that it was not possible to get a sweat from bodyweight exercises! 15 minutes in to our first routine she was racing for her water bottle and towel, and we hadn’t even touched a dumbbell…
Packing a simple exercise band, basically a long wide elasticated strip of rubber, into your luggage is a cheap, portable and very effective training tool. You can easily get a full body weight workout done in 30-40 minutes with just this piece of equipment. Squats, Lateral Raises, Rows, pulldowns etc etc can all be performed with the band to increase the resistance. Most of the items i have mentioned here can be picked up for very little money at most good fitness stores.
As you can see the lack of facilities should not be limiting your training program. A little bit of planning and investigating the right exercise for you and you’ll keep you training on track.
For a highly effective resistance workout and other time saving exercises, claim your free e-report “How to lose weight even when you are really busy” at http://www.corporateathletehandbook.com/. Tim Goodwin is author of The Corporate Athlete Conditioning Handbook and a fitness professional from Luxembourg, training the busiest individuals to achieve amateur sporting success and a healthier body. Feel free to duplicate this article with the bio and link intact.
