Business travel can be super hard on your body and mental wellness. From late nights to long flights, these trips take a toll on even the most experienced business traveler. Employing some basic tools on work trips can make it a bit easier to focus on your fitness and recovery.
This post contains affiliate links. I earn commissions when you buy through these links, at no cost to you.
Why should you read my thoughts on business travel wellness
I travel for work, a lot more than I’d like. But since I started as a road warrior 5+ years ago, I’ve developed some strategies and discovered a handful of tools that allows me to stay in shape while on the road. This has allowed me to climb many 14,000 ft mountains and run an ultra marathon between business trips.
Why is exercise while traveling important?
There are no two ways about it – regular travel is hard on the body and mind. The late nights, poor diet, and sedentary hours on planes take a toll on both our physical and mental well-being. We can counteract much of this negativity by integrating fitness into our routine while traveling for work or vacation.
Specifically, exercise can improve sleep, burn calories, and overall increase energy levels – all of which are much needed when traveling.
- Fitness: Traveling can disrupt your regular workout routine, but exercising while on the go helps you maintain your fitness levels. This prevents loss of progress and muscle mass, while burning excess calories.
- Energy: Working out during travel can boost your energy levels, helping you combat jet lag and stay alert for business meetings and collaboration with colleagues.
- Stress: Travel can be stressful, but exercise releases endorphins, which reduce stress and improve your overall mood. This can make your trip more enjoyable and effective.
- Exploration Locally: Exercising outdoors or at local gyms allows you to explore new surroundings, experience local culture, and even meet new people, enhancing your travel experience. This is one of the wonderful advantages of exercising outside when traveling.
There are a number of negative health impacts from business travel and specially from long or frequent flights. These negative outcomes (such as weight gain, mental illness, increased stress levels) can be partially checked with fitness during travel.
One case study used the Whoop to document just how hard a red eye flight was on a woman’s body. The poor sleep and time at altitude, combined with dehydration during flight, resulted in a 1% recovery after her flight.
Business travel exercise tools:
My favorite tools for enabling fitness while traveling are as simple as it gets – pack a wicking shirt, running shorts, and some running shoes in your carry on. Seeing that there is a ton of variation / personal perfence in this area – I’m going to focus on some common items that can enable most business travelers to get a better workout while on the move.
Criteria for picking fitness tools:
- Must pack easily in a carryon suitcase
- Effective / efficacy
- No TSA concerns
- Ideally multifunctional
- Augment what I can find at a typical hotel gym
In my opinion – there are a couple fundamentals to maintaining your wellness during business travel. These include exercise, self care (stretching, breathing, meditation), and nutrition (including hydration). The below tools will help with all three of these.
Fitness Tool #1 – Travel ready exercise implement (TRX Go strap system)
The TRX Go system is wonderful for getting a a through workout in a hotel room. The system consists of a strap set as well and extender and a door jam anchor point. The door jam anchor is what makes the TRX GO a perfect fit for hotel workouts – it slips over your entrance door and then you can use the system just like you’re in a gym. There are so many workout moves possible on the TRX system – atomic pushups, one legged squats, and lunges are some of my favorites. I’ve used the TRX system to train for skimo endurance races while I was traveling to an area with minimal gyms.
In terms of readiness for business travel – the TRX Go system is a perfect fit. It’s small enough to fit in your carry on and provide a range of exercises to augment even the best hotel gym.
If you start using the TRX Go on your business trips – you’ll have no excuse for not getting a quick work out in. Additionally, TRX makes a TRX GO Travel Kit that includes the strap system, resistance bands, and a water bottle.
Fitness Tool #2 – Travel ready massage tool – lacrosse or massage ball
The small but mighty lacrosse ball meets all of my criteria for a travel wellness tool. It packs easily, is non metallic, and wonderful for massages while on the go. There are many articles that detail how to use a lacrosse ball for myofascial release. I tend to use mine to massage my back (on a wall or floor) or to rub the soles of my feet. Lax balls are also great for use on a long drive to massage muscles in your back.
Recommendation: pick up a lacrosse ball from Amazon for a few bucks and keep it in your suitcase. It will help you get the inevitable soreness or tight spots out.
Pro tip: pack it in side your running shoes to not lose any space in your carry on luggage.
Fitness Tool #3 – Hydration during business travel – water bottle
Hydration while traveling can be difficult. Between the dehydrating effect of commercial air travel to the increased likelihood of salty food – you’ve got to be on your game to stay well hydrated. One key to staying hydrated is carrying your own water bottle during trips. I personally prefer the Klean Kanteen with a coffee mug top. I use this bottle setup to bring additional water on flights and to carry my coffee in the mornings (minor cleaning required).
I wrote an article comparing different water bottles for business travel – check it out to learn about other options.
Fitness Tool #4 – Whoop 4.0 to record exercise & recovery trends
We talk alot about how hard it is to make decisions without data and your fitness is no different. I use the Whoop 4.0 as my primary tool to understand my workouts and wellness. The Whoop 4.0 blends in super well with business attire and has never caused me an issue while navigating TSA checkpoints.
The Whoop 4.0 features five sensors that are constantly drinking in information about your body – skin temperature, blood oxygen level, heart rate, heart rate variability, and respiration rate. It’s like having an nurse constantly capturing your vitals.
While the Whoop’s sensors would be impressive alone, they can be life changing when combined with the Journal feature. The Whoop journal allows you to capture 200+ lifestyle habits each day. The Whoop backend then combines your daily physical fitness and recovery information with your lifestyle inputs. This combination will show you the impact of various activities. Specific to business travel, I like to track alcohol consumption, air travel, stress levels, and sleep time. This article details more about the Whoop 4.0 for business people.
Fitness Tool #5 – Augment mobile fitness with the right smartphone apps
The smartphone in your pocket can also help enable your fitness and wellness. Below are a couple of my favorite.
- Strava app – I love Strava – social media for endurance sports. For business travel, I use Strava to find running routes near my hotel.
- Whoop app – As I said above, I use the Whoop app to log data to understand the impacts of business travel
- Peleton app – meditation, strength & stretching
- Apps for meditation – smartphone apps are great for guided meditation. The above Peloton app is create for individual meditations. I also like the Headspace app, which guides you through a program of meditation sessions (which build on each other).
- Apps for healthy eating – nutrition can be easily impacted during business travel because of poor access to healthy food. I use the Whole Foods app (or just Google Maps) to find a supermarket to shortcut crappy food choices.
Pro tip – I created a folder on my iPhone home screen to keep many of my fitness related apps together. This encourages me to open these “good for me” apps.
Fitness Tool #6 – Reusable shopping bag to get groceries (better nutrition)
I also keep a reusable shopping bag (with large arm holes) in my carry on bag to make retrieving groceries easy (and green). The bag lives in my carry-on suitcase during travel (in it’s compressed state) and then I pull it out when getting groceries. This allows me to easily bring fresh fruit and vegetables back to my hotel room to augment the other foods I’m eating.
One expert move is to jog to a grocery store (with your shopping bag), get items for dinner, and then walk home.
