A few months after starting Crossfit I had to travel internationally for work, where I didn’t have the luxury of attending regular crossfit clases. Additionally, my hotel was pretty limited on equipment and space, so I found myself having to get creative in coming up with travel workouts. Originally I thought I was going to be stuck doing treadmill workouts again, but two of my coaches helpfully sent me some links for travel WODs to save me the trouble of trying to come up with my own crossfit inspired workouts while away. Most of them incorporated body weight exercises and not much equipment, making it much easier for me to do a workout in my room if I chose. In any case, I thought I’d share a round-up of some of the workouts I did while away, in the chance you find yourself searching for workout ideas while on the road.
Workout One:
This workout I was able to do in my room, even with limited space. I warmed up by doing a few inchworm/spiderman stretches, followed by Frankenstein walks and two minutes of jumping rope. I started with double-unders, but out of deference for the people in the room below me, I switched to regular singles so I wasn’t jumping so hard. After I was nice and warm, I did a relatively short workout:
Tabata: Sit-Ups
Tabata; Hand Release Push-Ups
I’m not going to lie, the Sally Up about killed me, but I gritted my teeth and finished! And for those of you who are wondering, a tabata is simply four minutes of work, broken up into intervals of 20 seconds of work followed up 10 seconds of rest. Do that 8 times, and you’re done! I downloaded a timer app to my phone that includes a tabata timer, so I didn’t have to guess when to work and when to rest.
Workout Two:
This time I headed to the gym for my workout, and warmed up with inchworm/spidermans, squats, and a short jog around the perimeter of the gym. Then I did 30 Manmakers, alternating between 10 and 15 pound dumbbells. The link gives you an idea of what the manmaker should look like, except our gym adds a right and left lunge with an overhead press at the end:
-push-up, right arm renegade row
-push-up, left arm renegade row
-squat clean thruster
-right and leg lunge, with dumbbells held overhead in press position
This workout smoked me, but I felt awesome at the end.
Workout Three:
This ended up being a shorter workout, but effective:
5 rounds of:
– 10 push-ups
-15 sit-ups
– 20 squats
I finished with 2 minutes of jump rope – 30 seconds on, 15 seconds rest alternating singles and double-unders.
Workout Four:
5 rounds for time:
-10 high knee raises
– 15-sit-ups
– 10 goblet squats (20lb dumbbell)
Finished in 9:27
Not for time:
2 rounds of 15 burpees
Workout Five:
Benchmark WOD: Angie
It may sound crazy, but I actually did this workout – voluntarily. I didn’t come up with it on my own, there is no way I would have looked at this workout and said, “Oh, gee, I think I’d LOVE to do 400 reps of stuff while I’m away for work and on my own!” Yeah, not going to happen. However, I was chatting with the Husband and he shared that it was the WOD at our gym one day. At first I was relieved that I missed it, but the more I thought about it the more I wanted to see if I could do it. Unfortunately, my only option for pull-ups was an assisted weight machine and I am notoriously bad at remembering how the machine works, so I ultimately ended up setting the weight too heavy, which meant my pull-ups were easier than they could have/should have been.Note to self for next time: it will definitely take longer to complete this when I do it with banded pull-ups!
100 pull-ups (scaled to 50)
100 push-ups (knees)
100 sit-ups
100 squats
I broke up my reps in sets of 10 and I finished each exercise completely before moving on to the next. Not surprisingly, the sit-ups were easiest for me. Surprisingly, the squats didn’t suck as bad as I thought they would have. I finished it 20:28.
Workout Six:
Cindy (5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 squats)
So the first time I ever did a version of Cindy was my first “official” Crossfit class. After going through a bunch of technique moves and stretches, we ended the workout with a 10 minute AMRAP of Cindy. It was, to sum up the workout in one word, HORRIBLE. I barely got through 3 rounds in 10 minutes, and they were awful, poorly executed rounds at that. I used bands for the pull-ups and still couldn’t complete 5 correctly. Our gym teaches tricep push-ups and I couldn’t even do them from my knees – I had to move to a box and I still struggled. The squats were the only thing that weren’t completely terrible, but I still struggled with my form. I left the class feeling frustrated, weak, and beaten down.
Fast forward to just under three months later. I decided to do the RX 20 min AMRAP of Cindy, using the assisted pull-up machine since I didn’t have bands. Having learned from the somewhat botched Angie workout, I initially set the pull-up machine for 70 pounds resistance, but switched to 60 after 3 rounds. I found this was a good weight to complete 5 pull-ups – it wasn’t easy, but I wasn’t absolutely struggling to finish 5. Also in a surprise twist, I did “real” push-ups! I’ve been slowly working my way up from doing push-ups on my knees to the full extended push-up, and I found I was able to do a set of 10 at a time.
I completed 11 full rounds, plus 1 additional pull-up!
Compared to the horrific 3 rounds I completed in 10 minutes three months ago, this is proof positive of some pretty awesome progress! I was smoked at the end of the workout, but I cannot stress enough how great I felt about it when I was finished.
When all was said and done, I only ended up working out about every third day. I could have done more; but on the other hand I could have done nothing, so I’m satisfied with what I did. The best part was that I felt confident about all the exercises I chose, I know I got a strong workout in each time (vice doing a lackluster treadmill run), and I felt good about the progress I made.
Looking for travel workout inspiration? Check out this downloadable PDF chock full of ideas! Need some more? Here you go!
Bear Family Strong 