You’re traveling for work or pleasure, and the hotel fitness center looks like your primary means of getting in exercise. What can you do to make the most of what equipment is available? Plenty! You just have to get a little creative. While hotel fitness centers can vary, most have fairly standard pieces of equipment that you can count on. Keeping those in mind, here are six ideas to get you started so that you can stay in shape while away from home.

Exercise or Stability Ball. This seemingly simple piece of equipment lets you work your hamstrings, triceps, chest, shoulders, abdominal muscles, core, back, glutes, quadriceps and inner and outer thighs. Talk about a lot of bang for your workout buck! FitnessBlender has a helpful video that offers a 10-minute total body workout that targets all of these muscles.

Bosu Ball. You can work your core as well as get in cardio, flexibility and strength training just by using one of these. By the way, it’s pronounced bow-sue. Popsugar Fitness offers this video on how to get a full body workout in about four-and-a-half minutes with five basic exercises.

Treadmill. Most of us know what to do with a treadmill, but did you know that you can use it to not only get in a good cardio workout, but it can work your thighs, hamstrings and quadriceps as well?  Check out  this article from the Houston Chronicle for more on how it does this.

Recumbent Bike. – If you have back pain or balance problems, you can still get in a good workout with the recumbent bike. But, if you don’t have these problems and an elliptical is available, you’re probably going to want to go with the elliptical to get in the best workout possible. See this article in the New York Times for more on Recumbent Bike vs. Upright Bike vs. Elliptical Machine.

Elliptical Machine. This machine lets you work your quads, glutes and hamstrings as well as get in a good cardio session. If you’re sitting in meetings all day or watching and waiting for your kids to finish an event, you’ve hardly moved at all before you even know it. An early morning or evening cardio session can energize you and help get your stagnant muscles going. This article at LIVESTRONG.com offers a more in-depth look at what an elliptical machine can do for your body.

Adjustable Bench and dumbbells. It’s amazing how much you can really do with one bench and some dumbbells. You can work your core, chest, arms, glutes, legs and get in cardio – just to name a few. For ideas, check out this article from Women’s Health magazine that lets you tone your entire body. Note: all of these exercises rely on the bench being in the flat position.

If you’re like me, it’s easy to say that while I’m traveling, I’m just not going to worry about getting in good exercise because all that’s available is the hotel fitness center. But there’s plenty that can be done, so don’t let the seeming lack of facilities or equipment stop you. As we’ve seen here, it doesn’t take much to keep you feeling great, so that your time away from home doesn’t end up being a bump in the road to your fitness goals.

Connect with Your Community

How do you stay in shape when you’re away from home? If you use the hotel fitness center equipment, let us know what you do, so we can all get ideas.

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