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You can get in shape despite your hectic travel schedule by using our basic hotel room workout. We’ve included this routine that you can do, all in the comfort and small spaces of cheap hotel rooms as you travel around the world. It has various steps and stages for a range of fitness levels from beginners up to the those who are already in top shape. This is just our basic hotel room workout – you can feel free to modify the times and exercises to your particular circumstances. We’ve also tried to include an estimate of how many calories each exercise will burn. (Burn rates based on 68 kg or 150 lbs individuals. More calories are burned the heavier you are.)

Warm Up (5 Minutes)

To get your heart rate up and muscles loose start with these variations sets of jumping jacks.

• Do a set of jumping jacks for 1 minute straight, taking 30 seconds off in between. If you’re working out in front of the television, do jumping jacks during the first set of commercial breaks for your warm up.
• To increase the difficulty, place pillows under your feet.
• For an even more difficult burn, though only after you’re thoroughly warmed up, try doing 10 seconds at double pace in between 10 seconds of your slower regular pace. Do this for 60 seconds.

This exercise will burn approximately 8-10 calories per minute and more importantly get your muscles warm.

Working Whole Body – Maintaining Elevated Heart Rate (5 Minutes)

Once you’ve completed the jumping jacks, switch to the little understood push up.

• Do a series of 3 sets – 10 repetitions with 30 seconds between another set of 8, then after a minute a final set of 6. This is the beginner routine. If it is too difficult, try modified push ups.
• You can also do higher repetitions like 15-12-8, or even much further depending on your strength.
• Setting an absolute number (like 300) is a good way to start the morning in your hotel room.

You’ll burn about 8-10 calories per minute.

Feel The Muscle Burn – Squats (5 Minutes)

Next, move on to squats, continuing to work your entire body with balance and resistance.

• Do a set of single leg lunges with 12-10-8 repetitions per set.
• Increase the workload by doing them for 30 seconds straight.
• Only do squats in between commercial breaks of your favorite TV show (2 sets).

This burns about 7 calories per minute.

Cardio – Loosen Up (10 Minutes)

Release some of that built-up tension in your legs by dancing it off. Dancing makes a great cardio workout and burns about 5-10 calories per minute.

• The switch to doing 5 minutes of kicking knee ups.
• You can mix either with running stairs.

Varies on your speed and intensity but about 8 calories per minute.

Time To Tone It Down And Finish Up (5 Minutes)

You’re in the home stretch. Your muscles are tired and your going to pack a punch in your last 5 minutes by attacking your abs.

• Go with a set of crunches alternating with sit ups – 1 minute each for 5 minutes.
• For an added bonus and workout, finish up with triceps dips. Sets of 10-8-6 for beginners and working up to 15-12-10 for a more difficult workout.

This entire workout will take around 30 minutes but you can mix it up depending on your schedule or spread it out throughout the day in your hotel room.

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This exercise, the plank, is one of the best you can do for your abs, arms, and upper body. It makes a great hotel room workout for many reasons, including the fact that it doesn’t require any motion. This isometric exercise relies on maintaining resistance against your muscles and is one you can do for an extended period of time. Planks are best done to music as your head must be facing the ground. You can do planks in a long series of sets for up to an hour to get a a great core workout.

How To Do A Plank

Think of the plank position as being very similar to the push up in the up position. For planks though, you’re not relying on your hands but rather your elbows to support your weight. You want to try and keep your entire back straight right down through your heels and not rest you neck by letting it droop down. Keep your head pointing, but don’t face, forward. Your elbows should form a 90 degree angle between your upper and lower arms. Try and hold the position like this as long as you can.

Plank Sets

Once you back starts dropping, which is usually the first sign of fatigue, you want to lower yourself to your knees and rest for about 30-60 seconds before attempting another set. The plank looks easy and it’s an exercise that’s easy to cheat on. Many people can do planks for a long time but be completely out of the proper position. Doing that provides you with little or no benefit and can actually strain your back. Sagging you neck down or too far up can also cause soreness and stiffness the next day and isn’t a comfortable feeling. Depending on the hotel room your in, a tender back on a hard bed will set you up for a rough morning the next day.

Plank Variations

People often ask how to make planks more difficult, which is touch to answer since the exercise is so dependent on position. We’ll start by making it easier however. You can put pillows under your elbows if they’re sensitive and like push ups, try starting on your knees if you absolutely have to. Both of these methods will make the planks easier until you can do the full position.

To increase the difficulty of the basic plank, you can put a firm couch cushion or pillow under your feet. This makes your core work slightly harder since it has to work more to keep your body balanced. Keep in mind though that you don’t want to have a pillow or cushion that’s too high. This will distort your plank and put more of the pressure on your shoulders and less on the abs and core. It is absolutely necessary to maintain the proper form and keep your body straight while doing planks so you can target your back, abs, triceps, legs, and the rest of your core.

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Triceps dips are a complex motion that works your upper arms and can also include your glutes, legs, and abs if done properly. You’ll need a solid base to do triceps dips on, so your bed or the cushion of a couch won’t cut it. You don’t want to slip while doing triceps dips on these soft surfaces that won’t get you the proper kind of resistance you’ll need. The best option is a chair, something most hotel rooms offer for their guests and if not you can try some alternatives. Calling the front desk and asking for a basic, even folding chair will cut it unless you’re exceptionally tall or short. Also, if you remove some of the cushions of a couch and use the hard front edge, that may also work but can be too low for most people.

Triceps Dips

Your arms are going to be doing a lot of the heavy lifting in this exercise although your upper back will be helping out too. Placing your hands behind you on the chair, you want to form a 90 degree angle in your elbow, lifting yourself up. Your feet should also be in front of you, forming a 90 degree angle between your thigh and calf. Then, very slowly you’ll begin to lower yourself down, coming up a bit faster in a short, explosive motion. Do not lock your elbows at the top. Doing so is very rough on your joints and you can easily hurt your elbow for many months down the line. Also, if you feel any tingly sensation or tweak your should doing triceps dips you should stop and avoid further hurting yourself.

Hotel room workouts are most effective when each single exercise incorporates as many of the major muscle groups in the body as possible. Triceps dips do that despite the name of the exercise being misleading. They are also great for coordination and those very important brain to muscle connections we keep emphasizing here.

Easy Triceps Dips

To help yourself get used to triceps dips, you can make them a bit easier on yourself by placing a fluffy pillow under your butt. You won’t have to go down as far and the pillow can give you a slight bounce back up. You can also try placing a book or your empty backpack as an alternative but the most comfortable option is definitely the pillow.

You don’t need to do an excessive amount of triceps dips to reap the physical rewards of them. A good number would be sets of 20-15-12 for physically fit travelers and beginners can start off with 8-6-4 to get their feet wet. As you fatigue, slow down and stop for 1 minute and then continue. Under no circumstances should you drop your weight back since that would be pretty painful on your shoulders. To add a bit of extra kick to these triceps dips, you can lift one foot and point it straight out. Doing this gives your abs a harder workout and is great for testing your endurance.

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This exercise can be done both in your hotel room or in the stairwell of the place you’re staying. Both of them are great cardio workouts and you can combine them to enhance your overall fitness while you travel around the world. Start by warming yourself up with a set of push ups and them moving on to kicking knee ups to get your heart rate up and your muscles loose. This will help you prevent injury to cold muscles and also give you a small adrenaline kick to give you more energy for the increased activity from doing these start exercises.

Doing Stairs In The Room

Obviously there aren’t a flight of stairs in your hotel room and if there are you must be staying in a very nice place! Anyway, the way to do stairs in the room is to use the couch, chair, or bathroom stool if there is one. You’ll climb up and down following the pattern – right leg up, left leg up, right leg down, left leg down; you can also do the reverse. It’s just important to alternate consistently to keep the load on both legs as evenly as you can. Similar to doing squats, you’ll feel this exercise right above you kneecaps in your quadriceps and likely very quickly at that.

To combat this fatigue and to stretch out the exercise across a period of time, use TV show commercials for an on and off schedule over 30 minutes or so. This will let you keep the stairs up for longer, and maintain an elevated heart rate burning more calories and fat in the process. It’s a nice, quiet hotel room workout that doesn’t require much additional equipment that isn’t already in your room for free.

Using Pillows

If you’re a bit out of shape, you can start yourself off nice and easy by replacing the couch or stool with a thick pillow. The pillow is lower to the ground and will give in more to your weight, but the uneven surface will also would more of the small muscles around your leg joints as well. We’ve talked a few times about the importance of incorporating balance into your workout routine. Doing so enhances the number of times and neural connections made by the brain to the muscles and back. This leads to less injuries down the line since the body is more aware of itself as it’s got a better line of communication with the brain.

When you want a stair master without the weight and a little more action, move yourself to the hotel’s stairwell. Make sure there are cameras and the exits can be opened and then get moving! The higher the hotel the better but try and maintain a constant pace. If you run the stairs like a sprint, you’ll tire yourself out too quickly to get any benefit. You want to run up and down the stairs and keep going for a minimum of 10 minutes, but ideally up to 20 minutes and beyond.

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You might think we’re being funny, but dancing in the hotel room is a great way to have fun while burning calories and getting a great workout at the same time. We already know you sing in the shower but adding the rest of the program and shaking your groove thing can be an added abs workout. This hotel room workout is best done with the alarm clock radio or one of the popular music stations on TV. You can dance fast or slow but to get this workout down you’ve got to time yourself and stay in motion for ideally 30 minutes.

You’ll burn about 7 calories a minute or about 210 for a total of 30 minutes – not bad for a fun exercise! Do your best to work up a sweat, that’s the point at which your body temperature rises about 2 degrees Fahrenheit or approximately a degree Celsius. During the first 10 minutes of your dancing routine you’ll be burning off the sugar in your blood and then begin taking on the stored reserves in your liver. If you can keep the dancing up for up to and over 20 minutes your body will be forced to start using some of those fat reserves you see everyday in the mirror. This process can be accelerated somewhat by working out immediately after waking up, before consuming and food or drinks (aside from water).

Using Dancing For Your Hotel Room Workout

Either way it’s a fun way to mix up your stay and workout in any hotel room. Get creative with your moves and even expand your reach to other parts of the hotel room. Consider it practice for when you go out for the night. You’ll be a better dancer in better shape by adding dancing to your hotel cardio routine. To increase your balance and strengthen your joints, try dancing on the couch or even bed if it’s not too noisy. The varied surface causes more resistance and you’re body will need more energy in the form of calories to overcome it. Also, it will work your joints in the ankles, knees, and hips as they have to constantly have to adjust to keep you balanced.

The music you select for your dance hotel room workout should be upbeat and encourage you to move fast. One of the best iPhone apps for travelers is a good play list for your hotel room workout. Music has been shown to improve workouts but only if that music is upbeat. Slower music tends to lead to lackluster workouts and can discourage you from exercising which is hard enough to get into in a hotel room. Also, be aware of your surroundings, you don’t want to trip or stub your toe while dancing around your hotel room. The one thing this fun workout may do is prevent you from taking the workout seriously. Dancing isn’t squats or jumping jacks but don’t discount the value for your cardiovascular system – dancing can significantly increase your heart rate and make your heart a much more efficient and healthy muscle – all in the comfort of your hotel room.

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This motion might be hard for you to imagine but it’s basically a “can-can”. Positioning your body upright and standing straight, you want to bring your knee up to your body forming a 90 degree angle between your thigh and torso. Do this in an alternating manner and you’ll be burning about 16 calories a minute while you give your abs, back, and legs a killer workout. Kicking knee-ups also get your heart pumping and make a great cardio workout you can do while standing in place in the hotel room. In terms of calorie burning efficiency, it’s one of the best hotel room workouts to use to expend energy in less time.

Kicking your knees up in this fashion will also produce endorphins and adrenaline to fuel your body and mind for the rest of the day or before a night out at the hotel bar. Knee-ups are a good alternative to using the treadmill in the hotel gym (if there is one) which can be broken or occupied by other guests. Plus it’s that much easier to work in knee ups with your other hotel room workout exercises like push ups or jumping jacks.

Good For Many Fitness Levels

This is also a very joint friendly hotel room exercise and can be done by people of many fitness levels. Even a slow motion knee up routine done over a period of 15-30 minutes with 2 minutes spaces between 2 minutes of knee ups can significantly increase fitness and burn calories. You can also do alternating sets of 2-4 minutes each by kicking your ankles back and tapping them with your fingertips. This works your hamstrings a bit more and will help flexibility in the legs. Two minutes forward knee ups followed by a minute or two of kicking your ankles back seems to be a good medium and pace for many people.

To increase the resistance and challenge of this exercise, try kicking your knees up higher (further than the 90 degree angle) to your chest. This will cause your body to hop a little more and you’ll definitely feel the burn in your legs and abs. Start slowly with this modification though and pace yourself into it, otherwise you’ll just have an intense minute or two before giving up on your workout all together.

Alternatives

In addition to kicking your knees up, higher up, and doing ankle kick-backs, you can also try raising your arm to touch the knee of the alternate side as it comes up. So your left arm would come across your body and meet your right knee as you lift it up. By involving more of your body you’ll increase the calories burned and give your muscles some new stimulation to keep them from adapting to the same old exercise.

Finally, you can try standing on one foot and raising you knee up to the 90 degree position and holding it from there as long as you can. This will give your abs that burning sensation while at the same time improving balance and strengthening your ankle joints.

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The difference between a sit up and a crunch is debatable but generally it comes down to how far up and close your knees you get with each repetition. A sit up works more of your abs due to the increases range of the motion. The full sit up uses your entire set of 6 abdominal muscles beginning with the upper portions and working the way down as you get higher.

A crunch on the other hand mainly works the upper abs and are generally easier for most people to do. Both make great hotel room workouts though since they target the muscles most people want to build up. The midsection is often hard hit for frequent travelers since sitting on planes, buses, and trains causes the abs to get lazy from little use. People also tend to eat worse when they travel, often eating out because cooking isn’t an option and being less inhibited with their diet away from home.

Sit ups and crunches are a great ‘filler’ exercise you can do throughout the day and in between sets of other hotel room workouts like push ups or squats. You’ll want to mix it up between both crunches and sit ups though and it can be easy getting caught just doing crunches. They are easier and many people think they’re just as effective as sit ups, which isn’t the case. These ab workouts both burn around 9 calories per minute and you can do them during your morning routine or to wake yourself up after a long afternoon nap.

Sit ups and crunches can be hard on your back if you’re sensitive and most hotel room floors are pretty hard. You can use any spare blanket in the room or perhaps order one from the front desk and lay it across the floor so you don’t get as sore. If you pack light, many yoga mats will fit in backpacks, or be carried on a plane easily and hardly weigh anything. They too can be a good buffer between your back and the hotel room floor.

Getting Sit Ups Right

Doing a good sit up is pretty easy the first time, it’s after a couple that people tend to lose their form. Due to fatigue or laziness many people will move their feet closer to their butts or not lift themselves up far enough turning a crunch into a neck exercise. It is also important not to keep your hands behind your head or neck since it causes strain and can increase the chance of injury. You’ll want to make sure your hands are on the side of your head and can’t be used to lift or force your head out of position.

Lift up and come down slowly and make sure both are proportional to each other. You should attempt to balance the time so that each repetition up takes as long as each repetition down. Like squats, you don’t want to bounce, otherwise you’ll be doing a bunch of nothing only to see no real results.

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Don’t dismiss this very powerful cardiovascular exercise which is commonly associated with children’s game or thought of as dated. Jumping jacks burn as many calories per minute – that’s 9 if you’re counting – as the whole body workout the push up. You can do jumping jacks to tone your core by keeping your back straight during your morning routine. While you do push ups during the commercial breaks of your favorite morning show while in front of the hotel room TV, you can hop up and continue with jumping jacks during the show. Assuming you can do a mere 15 minutes of jumping jacks during a 30 minute program, you’ll chop off 135 calories, all before you’ve had breakfast.

Doing jumping jacks in the morning also helps to stimulate the appetite, in turn encouraging you to eat more during the hotel buffet breakfast. Study after study has shown people who eat breakfast, within about 30 minutes after waking up, tend to be slimmer and healthier than those who put off the meal. Many people say they don’t like or feel right eating first thing in the morning, but when you’ve got an exercise routine that includes jumping jacks, you’ll shift your body’s natural circadian rhythms. In fact, doing this while traveling is a good way to get into the habit when you return home.

Business travelers can also get the edge of adrenaline and be more alert at their meetings when they walk out the hotel door. Exercise induced endorphins from intense cardio workouts help alertness and memory without the side effects of drugs or caffeine. Jumping jacks are also the kind of hotel room workout that makes breaking a major sweat easy, since you’re moving in place.

Most hotels also have floors thick enough to insulate the noise, but if it’s something you’re worried about you can throw down two pillows or couch cushions to keep the sound down. Making this modification to your jumping jacks also will improve the workout and cause your calf muscles to work harder as they adjust to the changing surface. In turn, you’ll also be greatly helping your balance but increasing the number of neural transmissions between your brain and muscles. This mind body connection helps you in older age and for frequent fliers, help fight insomnia and the blood clots associated with air travel.

To get your jumping jacks right, on the up part of the jump have your hands meet your feet (not literally but in that direction). Don’t get caught flat footed either, you want maintain your body by keeping to your toes. This gives you more lift, and actually makes the jumping jacks easier and reduces the impact on your heels and knees. Also keep your head straight with something to focus on – a nice hotel room view out the window or the television make great options. Count your jumping jacks and track roughly how many you can do on each hotel room workout so you have a number to work toward and exceed as you get in shape while traveling.

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Much like the misunderstood yet powerful push up, squats are an intimidating word and exercise to most people. Again, much like the push up, squats can be done in the tight spaces of most hotel rooms, don’t require a lot of motion, and are quiet enough to be done without disturbing your hotel room neighbors. The key to taking advantage of a squat, without weights, is to keep your back straight and complete the motion slowly. This will also help prevent injury while at the same time giving you that good old burning sensation in your quadriceps.

Two Kinds Of Hotel Room Squat Positions

You can go about squats in two different ways. Often, for beginners, it’s best to do with the single-knee down motion, where you form a right angle between your thigh and calf by squatting forward and using your back leg for support. Your arms will be relaxed but pointing toward the ground, although you can try a number of variations.

Once you get the single-knee squat down with your arms in the resting position, you can increase the intensity of this hotel room workout by holding weights in both hands. Since most travelers don’t carry dumbbells in their luggage, you can use buckets filled with free ice or use books that you may have bought or are in the room. You can also try extending your arms forward, in a “zombie position” creating a 90 degree angle between your arms and chest. Finally, you can make this versatile exercise work your balance even further but pointing your arms straight up while you complete the single-knee squat.

The second alternative to the basic single-knee down squat is to do a traditional double-knee squat. That position begins with your feet pointing mostly forward, set slightly wider than shoulder width. You want to squat down as far as you can, slowly, without bouncing or dropping to the ground. On the way up you’ll also need to take your time and not just shoot right up to get the most benefit from this squat.

As for your arms, they can be pointing out from your body at a 45 degree angle, going the direction of your knees. That’s the basic double-knee squat position for the arms but you can mix it up (and you should every few days so your body doesn’t get used to the exercise). Try placing your arms above your head or placing your hands behind your head, much like you would during sit ups or a crunch.

Squat Reminders And Basics

You want to maintain a straight back on the way down when performing squats. One of the most common mistakes is to hunch over or lean too far back, throwing yourself off balance. Doing so can increase your chance of injury and making the next common mistake – bouncing during the squat – is rough on your knees and should be avoided. Squats are one of the most complex exercises to give your body, they work your legs, abs, back, and chest as well as many other muscles in between. Squats are an excellent hotel room workout you can do in front of the TV without making a peep.

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