How To Exercise While Traveling Around The World

It’s usually quite easy to find a gym in your neighborhood or by your workplace to make sure you get your weekly workouts. But when you’re traveling around the world and you’re in a city for a limited amount of time, it doesn’t really make sense to pay for a gym subscription. So here are my few tips on how to exercise while traveling around the world as a digital nomad.

Gyms are hard to come by

To be perfectly fair, I never really bought into the whole gym mentality. You have to pay for a monthly or yearly subscription, you go in super pumped the first month. But then you slowly start to slack off and you don’t stick to your original ambitious schedule. You feel bad about yourself but you don’t feel like canceling your subscription because that’s just admitting to defeat. And when you finally decide it’s gone too far and it’s all just money out the window, you realize that you can’t even get out of the gym subscription. And now you feel worse and your wallet keeps getting lighter. Also, I don’t really like the idea of being in cramped spaces with a bunch of random people huffing and puffing, sweating it out on everything single piece of shared equipment. I honestly don’t get how people go to such gyms in the morning before going to work.

But if that’s your thing, more power to you! That being said, you’ll find it quite difficult to find gyms when you start your digital nomad lifestyle. I’ve only had a handful of times when my Airbnb or hotel had a gym facility. In fact, when I was in Quito, Ecuador I did spend a couple days a week at the shared gym. It was fairly empty but honestly, the equipment was either bad or broken so it wasn’t really that productive and in fact, it was dangerous! The treadmill would randomly skip, as in it would stop moving forward for a split second when you step on the surface. I could have seriously hurt my ankles! Sometimes, you will actually find some outdoors public exercise contraptions by public parks; think LA outdoor bodybuilder gyms. These can be fun, but every time I came across these it was just way too hot to even consider using them on a regular basis. Hats off to all the locals who in fact work out in such conditions!

Exploring your neighborhood by foot

One of my favorite things to do is to simply walk around my neighborhood. It’s a great way to get your bearings when you first arrive at your new home. You get to find out where the closest supermarkets, restaurants and bars are. When you’re walking, you also have a lot more time to take in the city and see how the people are, what type of food is available and you really get a feel for what it’s like to be living there. Sometimes it is fun to rent a bicycle, scooter or a car if you’re doing a road trip around the area, but you really don’t get to take in the city and the vibe as much as walking around.

I typically look at Google Maps or Maps.me (an open-source map app with sometimes good info not found on Google) before heading out and set a destination. That can be a restaurant or a bar, laundry service, a park or any kind of landmark that looks interesting to me. It doesn’t have to be that far either, it’s just a way to set a direction to follow. After that you can just explore the area, go with the flow. I also usually walk for about 2-3 hours, which is a good amount of exercise! I’ll go wander around and after about an hour, I’ll look at how I want to make my way back home and that can quickly add up to 2-3 hours. The next time around, I’ll look at the map again and go some separate direction to see what else there is to explore.

Walking is a great exercise because it doesn’t even feel like exercise. It’s very lightweight and you can go on for a long time. But at the same time it has a ton of health benefits and since it’s not strenuous you’re not likely to hurt yourself or overtrain. And when you walk around in the sun, you also get all that sunny vitamin D. Make sure you have plenty of battery on your phone so you can always easily find your way back home. Also, be careful when you pull out your phone in public. Don’t flash it around to draw attention to you and have it stolen. Smartphones have made their way everywhere around the world and you’ll see everyone with a smartphone. But there can always be pickpockets and petty thief so beware. With that in mind, make sure you pin all the fun places you found during your walking adventure. You’ll find places you’ll want to go back to and that aren’t necessarily marked on Google Maps!

Turn your walks into jogs

I used to love running and I suppose I still do. I ran the San Francisco Marathon in 2015 and that took 6 months of training. I don’t think anybody goes to such lengths if they don’t at least slightly enjoy jogging!

As part of my exercise routine outside of my marathon training, I used to go jogging around the block. I also liked to do long runs along the Bay and I really got into High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) where I would spring for 30 seconds, walk for 30 seconds, repeat for a total of 12 minutes. Believe me, it’s a lot harder than you think!

When I started traveling, I did try to continue jogging. It’s also another way to explore the city you temporarily calling home. But I never really enjoyed jogging to new areas especially if they’re busy with people. I like to have a pre-determined area where I want to jog and stick to that area, whether that’s a strip by the Bay, a trail around a park, or up and down a fairly quiet street. But if you enjoy exploring new areas while jogging, by all means you should go for it! Just obviously try to be respectful of the people around and don’t go flashing by local pedestrians!

Take in some Nature

I think you’re picking up on a thread here. Yes, I love using my feet to get around! Hiking is another one of those fun activities where you’re basically just using your legs to move from A to B. But what’s great is you get to be in Nature. And you’ll be surprised how different the fauna and flora can be entirely different in different parts of the world. An awesome website to check out is www.alltrails.com. They show a ton of different trails from all around the world so you can get a feel for what you’re getting into before heading out.

Certain parts of the world are famous for their hiking and so you can find organized hikes that you can sign up for. I used to sign up for these at hostels as they always have a ton of activities they want to advertise. After making friends over drinks at the hostel, you can ask about what activities they’re planning and if they’re interested in tagging along. That’s how I planned my hike up a volcano in Antigua, Guatemala. I even got to see a real-life volcano eruption, which was wild to see in person! Honestly, the hike was physically harder than the marathon. The marathon is a lot tougher psychologically. You keep asking yourself: when will this end?! But the steepness and the gravely way up the volcano was really tough. We also had to camp for the night so it involved a lot of hiking. But the reward of getting to the top and witnessing a volcano eruption and seeing Nature in all its glory was totally worth it!

Find fun activities to take part in!

You don’t have to limit yourself to just walking, jogging and hiking. As I mentioned earlier, hostels are great places to find out about what kind of activities are available in your area. Many times, the host or the person who’s working at the hostel is so excited to show you around, they might even be looking for someone to tag along with them!

If you’re into basketball, look for a public basketball court. If you’re into swimming, look for a swimming pool. If you’re into beach volleyball, hang out by the beach volleyball court and make friends. In fact, if you’re by the beach, it’s always fun to relax, nap, tan and read. But you can also go for a quick jog by the water, you can go for a brisk swim and if you bring an inflatable ball or buy some paddles, you can hang out with friends and do a casual game of paddle board.

When I was recently in Mandalay, Myanmar I was lucky that my girlfriend had a friend in the city. He invited us to play some futsal. I hadn’t kicked a soccer ball in years but it was exciting just to mess around and aimlessly run after the ball. I was sore for the next 3 days but it had been a while since I did such a brisk and breath-taking workout.

Body weight exercises at home

At the time of this writing, the coronavirus is forcing us all to stay at home. That makes it difficult to go out for a swim or even just a walk around the neighborhood. But not to fear, there are plenty of ways to work out at home. In fact, back when I lead a “settler” lifestyle, this was the main way I got my exercise done. I did a lot of running, but most of the time I was just working out at home. And although I invested in a few dumbbells and jump rope, you really don’t need that much to get a good workout.

I don’t expect to travel around the world carrying dumbbells in your backpack. That would be a terrible idea unless your idea of backpacking is carrying bricks around. But there’s a ton of bodyweight exercises you can do at home. Also, there’s a ton of free smartphone apps you can install and follow along with the prompts. Also, you can easily search for body weight exercises on YouTube to find out all the best routines you can add to your schedule. I usually just focus on some lower abs and obliques for body weight. That’s because I have a few other tricks down my sleeve for a full body workout.

I’m more on the slim side but I tend to want to focus my workouts around my chest. And many of the exercises that focus on the chest typically require gym equipment. But I recently came across some super lightweight resistance bands that I can carry around with me on my travels. They come in different shapes and resistances but since they’re so light, buying a couple of these is a no-brainer. You can use them for stretches, your upper body, lower body, core, etc… There’s a ton of YouTube videos that showcase all the best routines so be sure to search for resistance band exercises there.

Nintendo Switch Fitness Boxing

And for my final trick, I’ve got the best thing ever! Of course, it has to involve gaming. Fitness Boxing on the Nintendo Switch is a super fun game that gives you a true workout. No joke. In the beginning, I tried to stick to the daily recommended 30 minutes full body workout. But I would be so sore after a couple days and I’d give up on it until the next week. I tried dialing it down to the other recommended option of daily 20 minutes full body workouts, and I still found myself skipping days from soreness and exhaustion. If you put your all in this game, it’s really no joke. Now, I’ve settled with a daily 10 minute chest workout which at the end of the day still gets your whole body working out. And I’m finally able to keep up with a daily routine with this.

What’s great about the software is that it gamifies exercising, the music is great, it really gets you moving, the challenge keeps increasing as you learn new moves and combos and you don’t need to buy any extra peripheral (like Ring Fit Adventure). You just strap your Joy-cons in each hand and punch away! I’m sure there’s a bunch of other games you could buy that follow the same concept like Just Dance 2020, but this one I knew I would get into from the start so that’s what I went for. There’s even a free demo on the Nintendo e-shop so go ahead and try that out!

That’s it for the tips and tricks I have to keep in shape when traveling around the world, whether I’m self-quarantining or not. I hope this is helpful and if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading and I’ll catch you on the next one!

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