I will use myself as an example and share with you what I did one time that I was traveling abroad and was in a hotel with no gym. The nearest gym was 30 miles away and I must admit that I was so busy the week prior to me leaving that I failed to do my due diligence in finding these things out before the trip (something that I could have done via the web).
While the situation looked grim, I looked around my room and I saw a couple of items that I could use for my workout: an extremely sturdy oak beam reinforced by iron that ran from one side of the wall to the next. And, I also had a chair. I had no cardiovascular equipment but I figured that I could do high repetitions and perform the bodybuilding workout in a circuit training fashion so that I could increase my heart rate considerably and also burn some extra calories.
Since I had trained using a lot of high volume and heavy weights at the beginning of the week when I was still home, I figured that for the weekend all I needed to do was some body weight exercises in order to maintain the muscle mass and keep the metabolism running in high gear.
With that in mind, here is the routine that I designed with the limited items I had available:
Full Body Giant-Set
- Wide Grip Pull-ups to Front on the wooden beam 7 sets of 15-20 repetitions
- Incline Push-ups (legs on the chair) 7 sets of 20-30 repetitions
- Lunges 7 sets of 20-25 repetitions
- One Legged Calf Raises 7 sets of 40-45 repetitions (90 seconds of rest)
Also, sometime in the afternoon I would perform this Giant-Set for Abs in order to further spike my metabolic rate.
Abdominal Non-Stop Giant-Set
Note: For this Giant-Set you will do one exercise after the other and when you get to the last exercise, you will start over at the beginning without rest. Perform the sequence for 3 rounds.
- Leg Raises 3 sets of 15-25 reps
- Knee-Ins 3 sets of 15-25 reps
- V-Ups 3 sets of 15-25 reps
-
Bicycle Crunches 3 sets of 15-25 reps
- Crunches 3 sets of 15-25 reps
I performed this routine on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Since the exercises were performed without weights I figured I could get away with doing them every day. My recovery was not affected and every day I seemed to be better able to do more repetitions.
While the routine looks simple, trust me, it will send your heart rate through the roof!
I personally performed it every morning before the start of the day, but it can be performed at any time. You can also split the ab work (like I did) and do it at a different time if you'd like. If you do the abdominal workout with the full body circuit, then do one less set for each abdominal exercise (so instead of 3 sets, do 2 sets).
For more information on bodybuilding while traveling please take a look at my article on [link url=http://bodybuilding.about.com/od/howtoachieveresults/a/bodybuildtravel.htm>Bodybuilding Training and Dieting While Traveling[/link].
