Fitness tips for business travellers

Next up in our 'Healthy Living for Traveling Executives' series: Exercise.  Here are the top tips to keep your fitness levels up and maximise your energy during business trips.

The key point is to plan your approach to exercise well in advance of your trip.  Every day of travel should have a basic amount of activity and the easiest way to achieve this is with walking.  This can be functional walking as part of your schedule of meetings, casual walking, perhaps to see the local area, or even walking on a treadmill at the hotel gym. You can use a pedometer or smartphone App to help you clock up your daily steps. 

For every two days you are away you should aim for one workout that raises your heart rate higher than your regular walking speed.  You can use the hotel gym or swimming pool or you can put together a short workout in your hotel room or you can exercise in a local park providing the environment is safe.  

Whatever exercise or activity you have access to, focus your attention on a short workout during which you push yourself.  There are four reasons for this:

1) Exercising at a higher intensity will save you time.  

2) Planning a shorter workout will mean you are more likely to follow through on your plan.  Getting a workout started is often the toughest bit and, even though you plan for a short workout, once you've begun chances are you'll keep going for longer.  

3) Exercising at a higher intensity requires you to engage your brain more than low level activity.  This can help clear your head of the 'busyness' of a challenging trip and help you manage stress levels.  

4) Exercising hard will tire you out and can enhance the quantity or quality of your sleep helping you to minimise any possible effects of jet-lag.  

Planning your activity in advance will set your expectations of the trip and enhance your chances of staying in good shape while you're away.  At a basic level it will also ensure that you take the appropriate kit with you and won't be able to use this as an excuse not to get active!

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Image by Flickr: tudydamian