If you regularly engage in exercise training, traveling can really interrupt your routine, especially if your lodging spot is devoid of fitness equipment. I recall a four-day visit to Tupelo, Mississippi during which I stayed at a family member’s small ranch surrounded by nothing but outhouses and red dirt roads. Adding insult to injury, at a temperature of nearly 100 degrees, it rained the entire time I was there, which left me without the option to run outdoors.

Given my inconvenient situation, I opted to put my body weight to use. For three days straight, I performed endless sets of calisthenics like burpees, push-ups, dips, squats, lunges, mountain climbers, and planks to exhaustion. Honestly, confusing my muscles this way was a good thing. It was during this trip that I came to a pretty simple realization: Successfully maintaining any exercise training plan requires regularity but also a little flexibility for sanity’s sake.

Not having access to plush fitness equipment or even a road to walk or run on is absolutely no excuse for being physically inactive during travel. In such cases you simply have to adjust. Here are a few ways to make the process a little easier.

1. Include a jump rope in your luggage for daily use.

Rope jumping is a high-impact, high-intensity exercise that burns a substantial amount of calories in a relatively short amount of time. By performing 3-5 minute spurts of rope jumping for a total duration of 30 minutes you can burn anywhere between 350 and 450 calories. It’s also an effective exercise for working your core muscles and toning up your arms and legs.

Related Article: 5 Cheap and Convenient Ways to Burn Fat Fast

2. Bring along some resistance bands or tubing.

With resistance bands or tubing you can easily incorporate high-repetition training for a range of exercises to support muscle building and strength development. Training this way is also great for boosting your metabolic rate. When training with low weight resistance equipment, it’s best to perform one or multiple sets of 12-20 (or more) repetitions.

Related Article: How To Determine Loads, Repetitions and Sets During Weight Training

3. Incorporate a body weight training routine.

When it comes to exercise training, your body weight is a powerful, convenient and very resourceful tool. Believe it or not, you can burn a substantial amount of calories by performing some of the simple calisthenic exercises I mentioned before. A body weight training routine can be performed in either a single session or sporadically throughout the day.

Here’s a simple, yet highly effective body weight workout that can be performed anywhere, anytime.

  • Standard or modified push-up (until exhausted)
  • Stationary or traveling lunges (alternating legs until exhausted)
  • Jogging in place and/or mountain climbers (3-5 minutes)
  • Plank (30-60 seconds)
  • Chair dip (until exhausted)
  • Standard and/or tip-tip toe squats (until exhausted)
  • Jumping jacks and/or other cardio (3-5 minutes)
  • Plank (60-90 seconds)
  • Single-leg half squat (alternating legs until exhausted)
  • Burpees (until exhausted)
  • Jogging in place and/or mountain climbers (3-5 minutes)
  • Plank (90-120 seconds)

Traveling can make it difficult to maintain a routine exercise training program but there’s really no excuse for being physically inactive. If you really want to continue some sort of training regimen when you’re away from home, know that you do have options, even if your resources are severely limited.