How To Prioritize Working Out While Traveling

💪🏻 If you want to skip workouts when traveling, that’s great for you. However, I feel better when I DO workout! Here’s how I make exercise a reality when I’m traveling for either pleasure or work.

Nice, France is so…nice. The weather was just lovely for long outdoor walks.

Make Your Workout a Non-Negotiable Priority

If fitting a workout in during your real life and day-to-day routine is a challenge, it’s going to be near-impossible while traveling if you don’t prioritize it and protect it with your life.

The endorphins, the mental peace, the feeling better about myself and my less-than-perfect food choices that tend to happen when traveling make workouts a non-negotiable for me.

That’s not to say that I wouldn’t ever skip workouts (sometimes it truly is not possible), but if given the choice, I prefer to workout than to not.

90% of the time my travel workouts are steps in the form of walking, occasionally running, although as I’ve gotten older, I love “just” walking.

But sometimes I lift.

I was in a Paris gym last week that was 98% males ages 16-40. I was the sole American (it was obvious), just one of a few women, and definitely the only woman 50+. The others were in their early 20s. I had messy hair but I wasn’t there for anyone else other than myself - for my physical and mental health and it felt great leaving that gym knowing I did was I set out to do.

I made an Instagram reel of me working out in France and just posted it. Would love a like, follow, or comment if you’re so inclined. Thank you!

With some planning, working out is possible. Real world, practical tips that help me:

• Program workouts into your daily agenda and then don’t skip them. If it’s a vacation or pleasure trip, that means talking with my spouse or daughter the night before if we’re traveling together, figuring out what we’re doing the next day, and then working exercise in. While your family members may fritter away time in the morning doomscrolling or a luxuriating over a third cup of coffee this is often my chance to run, power walk, lift, find a yoga/pilates class within walking distance of where we’re staying, etc. They’re not going to miss me for an hour or 90 minutes.

• Go to bed at a reasonable hour and keep your drinking as light as possible so that you’re not tempted to sleep in or blow off the workout you had planned.

• My fall back is always simply walking briskly for 60-90 minutes which helps me knock out 8000-10,000 steps and with that, my mental outlook for the day is just 1000x better! If I’m in a European city or an American city that I know is walking-friendly, I just start walking or running. I’ve found there’s no better way to get to know a city that just walking it.

Some trips naturally have lots of steps built into them. Some don't. But I choose to walk rather than Uber, train, taxi whenever humanly possible.

Pack Your Suitcase With Your Workout Gear

This seems so obvious but it’s not many times. You can’t workout if you don’t have the right shoes (at minimum) and the right (or any) workout clothes.

You can’t do the workout you didn’t pack for. I’ve been known to think, “It’s going to be such a short trip” or “there won’t be time to workout” and I don’t pack my tennis shoes and some leggings or shorts, and then I wind up kicking myself, trying to find a Lululemon store, a random Target, anywhere that I can buy anything, and I waste the little precious time I did have in search of said items.

My suitcase is now always packed with my:

• toiletry kit

• pair of Hokas

• best socks

• Lulu Align sports bra and shorts set

• Amazon brand sports bra + shorts set is really good for the price point (pics below)

• lifting gloves

I never actually unpack those items. Also check out my Workout Gear post for my favorites!

This red set and plum set are both Amazon brand!

On the topic of how to pack, my how to pack so well that you never have to check a bag post may give you some nuggets of packing wisdom.

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