Tuesday Training: The Traveler’s 10 Minute Fitness Plan

I ran across this post on saturated fat and cholesterol from Jules’ Fuel a couple months ago and was a fan of her website ever since. That’s why I’m really honored to have Julia Visser write a fitness post for all of you! I think she’s absolutely brilliant. Julia is pursuing her Master’s of Science in Holistic Nutrition and she and her website are a huge wealth of information for me. You’ll find food and nutrition fundamentals like the skinny on gluten and intermittent fasting. Julia is also heavily involved in athletics so you’ll find plenty of sports nutrition, workouts and recipes. She’s a world traveler and shares her healthy living traveling tips like her post on Natural Immunity Boosters and Tips to Fit Real Food Into A Fast Lifestyle. Peruse her site – you won’t be disappointed. Also be sure to like her page on facebook to see where in the world she and her professional basketball playing husband will end up next!

 The Traveler’s 10-Minute Fitness Plan

“Nothing is certain in life except change.”

We’ve all heard this common (and true!) phrase, and within this whole category of change, I’m adding a subcategory that I has most certainly been a constant in my life…

TRAVEL.

From traveling as an athlete in college, to making weekly trips across country as a marketing associate, to covering 5 states in sales, to moving overseas to several different countries, my life has and continues to revolve around travel!

The upside?? 

I’ve been blessed with many culinary adventures, opportunities to see the world, world perspective, and fascinating cultural experiences.

The downside?? 

With 300,000+ frequent flyer miles and a gagillion miles via car, train, and bus to date, I can tell you first-hand that travel constantly.disrupts.health.homeostasis.

From jet lag to different foods and foreign bacteria, travel isn’t always sexy (ever heard of “traveler’s diarrhea?”)!!

Lack of time, lack of exercise equipment, lack of money, and lack of MOTIVATION can all interfere with our body’s natural need to MOVE while away from home.

The Shortest, Most Efficient Exercise

But, I’m here to tell, you, these are not viable excuses anymore.

Whether short on all of these mentioned above, you can do your body and your health a major boost by exercising while traveling.

After all: “…Experts say that moderate physical training leads to an increase in sleep length and nighttime alertness” when dealing with jet lag!

And…

You only need 10 MINUTES from start to finish.

How does just 10 minutes accomplish this!?

Research shows that when these 10 minutes involve high intensity intervals, or short bursts of intense exercise with short recovery breaks in between, it can produce the same physical benefits as conventional long duration endurance training (Little, Safdar, Wilkin, Tarnopolsky & Gibala, 2010).

It also induces skeletal muscle metabolic and performance adaptations for the following 24 hours (Bellou, et. al, 2013)!

Besides the short-term benefits, it has long-term lifestyle benefits including improved body composition, decreased risk of heart disease, and improved exercise tolerance (Gremeaux, 2012), too!

 The Traveler’s 10-Minute Fitness Plan 

Ingredients

A method of timing (watch, clock, interval app on your phone, etc.)
Your body
Your method of sprinting (On a road, treadmill, stairwell, bike, rowing machine, elliptical, etc.)

Note: If you don’t have access to a road, gym or stairwell where you’re traveling, pick ONE body weight exercise to do in your hotel room. (Examples: Body weight squats, mountain climbers, pushups, burpees, etc.).

Instructions

1. Set a timer and warm up for 3 minutes. (Try jogging in place or doing jumping jacks if you’re confined to your hotel room, jog on a road, walk stairs, or warm up slowly on a machine if you have access to the gym.)
2. Sprint for 30 seconds at your highest intensity.
3. Rest or move at low intensity for 30 seconds.
4. Repeat 3 more times.
5. Cool down for 3 minutes.

Even though the whole workout is 10 minutes, you’re really only doing 2 MINUTES of hard work! I’ve used this successfully  numerous times while traveling (including doing burpee intervals in a Munich hotel room), and love that it provides all of the health benefits without sacrificing time… so that you can focus on your travels!

• For other small ways to add in exercise when traveling (or busy), check out my post here. 
• For 8 sweaty workouts that you can do in your home or hotel under 15 minutes, read my post here.
• Also – check out 4 other ways to hit the ground running while traveling here!

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Your turn!

1) I’d love to hear from you if you try this 10-minute method.
2) Do you have other effective fitness tips that you use when traveling?

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Meet Julia Visser from Jules’ Fuel

References

Bellou, E., Magkos, F., Kouka, T., Bouchalaki, E., Sklaveniti, D., Maraki, M., Tsekouras, Y., Panagiotakos, D., Kavouras, S. and Sidossis, S. Effect of high-intensity interval exercise on basal triglyceride metabolism in non-obese men. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, andd Metabolism, 10.1139/apnm-2012-0468. http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/apnm-2012-0468#.UcYIaBZ8KZY.

Gremeaux, V., Drigny, J., Nigam, A., Juneau, M., Guilbeault, V., Latour, E., Gayda, M Long-term lifestyle intervention with optimized high-intensity interval training improves body composition, cardiometabolic risk, and exercise parameters in patients with abdominal obesity. American Journal of Physical Medical Rehabilitation. 2012 Nov;91(11):941-50. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22854902. 

Little, J., Safdar, A., Wilkin, G., Tarnopolsky, M., and Gibala, M. A practical model of low-volume high-intensity interval training induces mitochondrial biogenesis in human skeletal muscle: potential mechanisms. The Journal of Physiology, 588, 1011-1022. 25 January 2010. http://jp.physoc.org/content/588/6/1011.

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