Were you embarrassed because your arms were wiggling and jiggling every time you gestured toward your PowerPoint at your last business meeting? Or are your pants becoming just a tad too tight? Sneak in some workouts while you’re on the road. Business trips can make it hard to stay in shape. Hours spent sitting in airport lounges, on airplanes or behind the wheel of a car plus a lot of cheap, fattening food or happy hour cocktails can add pounds to your frame quickly. This, unfortunately, is exactly the type of extra baggage you don’t want to bring home with you.
An App a Day
Working hard on the road doesn’t mean having to work out less, especially with the many great fitness apps that are available today. Some of these apps are designed to help you keep track of your results, while others offer ideas on how to exercise in the privacy of your own room when you just don’t feel like heading to the hotel’s gym.
Map My Walk
Whether you’re staying in New York City or looking to hike trails in the mountains near Denver, Map My Walk uses GPS to keep track of the number of miles you cover each time your feet hit terra firma. Map My Walk, the number one walking app, is available for BlackBerry, Apple and Android Products. For runners, there is a Map My Run app that is available on the same platforms.
Exercise Without Gym
After a hard day at work, interacting with a lot of different people, sometimes the last thing you want to do is change into workout clothes and head to the hotel’s gym — especially if you’ve been trying to avoid that annoying coworker who is staying down the hall from you. For those times, you can use the Exercise Without Gym app, which is available for the BlackBerry 10. This app features 15 exercises that you can perform in the comfort of your own room.
Body Buddy
Sometimes prevention is your best friend. For instance, what you don’t put in your mouth won’t go to your hips. Body Buddy, an app available for the BlackBerry 10, will help you track your daily calorie intake as well as how many you burn through exercising.
Use a Bike Share
Although there are only a few bike share programs currently available in the U.S., the idea is growing in popularity and will probably be in a number of cities soon. The top bike share programs in the U.S. are located in Washington, D.C. and New York City. However, according to the San Francisco Examiner, the City by the Bay will soon be offering its own bike sharing program as well.
With a share program, you can pick up a bike from one of the many kiosks located throughout a city and then ride it to your next work appointment or to dinner. You can then leave the bike at the nearest kiosk or ride it back to the one you borrowed it from. Bike share programs make it easy to take two-wheeled transportation and stay fit while on a business trip.
Yoga on the Go
Yoga is an excellent way to stay limber and it can also burn a lot of calories. According to Women’s Health Mag, an hour of vinyasa-style or flow yoga, for example, will burn about 445 calories in an hour. Yoga is an easy form of exercise to do on the road. All you need is a travel yoga mat, which is designed to fold rather than be rolled up, and a DVD. If you’re staying in a Klimpton, you won’t even have to pack your own mat, as these boutique hotels offer yoga mats in every room as well as free on-demand fitness TV.
Thank you to our contributing author, Jean Osgood
Jean earned a degree in exercise science and does personal training at her home gym. She loves discovering new advice on dieting and nutrition when she’s not helping clients get stronger.