PODCAST - How to Work Out While Traveling (Without Ruining Your Vacation)
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[00:00:00] Welcome to The Athlete with Asthma Show. I'm your host, Johnny Havey, an ultra runner, endurance athlete, and yes, a guy who's had an inhaler prescribed since birth. Despite doctors telling me I could never play soccer nor run a marathon, let alone 100K ultra, I proved them all wrong. This show is where I share everything I've learned, from breathing techniques to mindset shifts, to help you become the athlete and the person you truly want to be.
So if you're ready to achieve your goals despite limitations, let's get started.
I'm in the middle of training for a race, and I've had back-to-back traveling weeks just five to six weeks out from my event. Well, today on the show, I'm gonna share with you how I kept working out while traveling without ruining either of my [00:01:00] vacations. Maybe you're traveling because of work. Maybe you're traveling because of school.
Maybe you're not traveling because of leisure purposes. Either way, this episode is for you. The first thing that I really had to wrap my head around in going into both of these trips was mapping out how far away from my event I was. Well, you may know that I'm an ultra runner, and I've had asthma since as far as I can remember.
I was told when I was... But I was coping with asthma even before that. And you may know that even though I'm an ultra runner, I've started getting into training for HYROX events, and my next HYROX event is about five to six weeks out after these two vacations. Well, that's really important to know because depending on when you're traveling related to when your event is, you're going to look at this whole picture differently.
Also, if you're not training for an event, but maybe you're training for some other purpose, maybe you have some sort of protocol for your health in [00:02:00] general. Maybe you have a specific condition that you're training for with a protocol. Maybe you're training to improve your asthma. Whatever it is, it is important to look at the big picture.
And then we start zoning in on what the length of the trip is, the purpose of the trip, how busy is the trip. Is it a vacation, work, whatever? And then we can really start looking at the three steps I'm gonna share with you today. The first thing that I look at whenever I travel, if I'm training for something or not, I look at scheduling trainings you aren't building.
What does this mean? This means that as long as you can make this happen, I understand that you may travel a lot for your job or for fun or whatever. You just travel a lot. And in that case, you may not be able to always be on a maintenance week or a drop-down week while traveling. But the key here is if you travel monthly or if you travel once a year, whatever it is, if you're not traveling so [00:03:00] frequent that it's a way of life, then I highly recommend that when you're traveling, you're not building, which means that you're not trying to increase your capacity.
So let's look at marathon training. If you're in the middle of an 18-week marathon training, 18 weeks, then what you're doing most likely is you're building for three weeks, three-week builds, and then you're doing a one-week drop-down. And to be fair, the first week after a drop down isn't necessarily even a build.
You're actually starting where you left off in that previous three-week block. So, the point is you don't wanna be in a heavy build week. I highly recommend that if you can schedule it this way, to schedule it with a drop down week. Now, 18 weeks, if you take marathon training and you break it into three weeks of building, one week drop down, then this is [00:04:00] four weeks.
Well, four weeks times four equals 16 weeks, which means that there's two more weeks if you're doing an 18-week program. Well, typically before a race, you wanna do something called tapering, and tapering is something else that you can look at when you're scheduling your training related to travel, is you could have it during a tapering week.
Now, you gotta be careful though, because if you are training for a race that's at altitude, that's at elevation, and then you go and you travel to sea level for the week or two before your race, that could really throw you off, even if you're traveling during the taper. Because your body is going to adapt to sea level, and it's gonna have to re-adapt to being at elevation when you get back, so you gotta be careful with that.
The other side of things, if you're at sea level and then you're traveling to elevation during the taper, note that your taper will feel harder, but this could actually [00:05:00] have a positive impact on your race, because you're gonna be at elevation, and then you're gonna come back down and you're gonna feel amazing when you're at sea level.
So this isn't a perfect science, but you really, when you're looking at your workouts when you're traveling, especially if you're on vacation, but also if you're traveling for work or something and you just have a really busy trip, you don't wanna have to be committing to building, to progressively overloading to actually increase your capacity in one way or another.
So yeah, you really want to either Maintain or do a drop down. Or as long as we're being careful with our taper and where we're gonna be for that, you could do a taper. Now, I don't like traveling the week before a race, but if you're two weeks out, maybe you could pull it off. One week before, I really don't like to do it unless I am coming from higher elevation back down [00:06:00] into where I'm actually racing.
Number two, even if you can't do the right thing, so let's say you show up at your hotel, your Airbnb, wherever you are, your cruise ship, and you can't find the right exercise that you need for your training program, don't do nothing. I still highly recommend that you figure out how to do something to keep moving while you're traveling.
And let's say that you don't work out, and you're going on a trip, and you know that you're probably gonna be indulging in more food and beverages. I highly recommend that you integrate movement into your trip. This could be taking longer walks. This could be doing a bike tour. This could be going to the gym and just trying out some things.
But let's say you do have a structured routine, and you get to wherever you're traveling to. For example, my fiance and I went on an Alaskan cruise, and this was, like I said, about six weeks, maybe seven [00:07:00] weeks out from HYROX Denver. And, uh, I knew that I wasn't gonna be building very much 'cause we're gonna be at sea level.
I'm training for HYROX Denver, so a mile high. But I also knew that I wanted to keep things up. I wanted to do something. Well, when I got to the gym on the boat, I realized that they didn't have wall balls, and wall balls are the thing that I'm focused on the most in my HYROX training right now. So what did I do?
Well, instead of doing wall balls, I broke it down and I thought through, "What muscles am I working with wall balls?" Typically, with wall balls, you squat with your glutes all the way down to, you know, a wall ball, and that's a great way to practice them, is have another wall ball, put it under your butt, squat down, touch your butt to the wall ball, and then squat up, throw the ball up 10 feet, catch it, and you do it again.
I didn't have access to this, but I did have access to dumbbells. So I thought to myself, "I could do a squat thruster." So I still [00:08:00] squat low, take the dumbbells here, and I'm gonna have heavier dumbbells than the wall balls, significantly heavier dumbbells than the wall balls. Squat low. Up, bring it back down.
It's the same movement, it's just a different exercise. So that's what I did, is instead of wall balls, I did squat thrusters. And you can apply this to anything. When I was a long distance cyclist, I would travel and not have access to a bike. Now, I would try and make sure I got access to a bike at least one of the days.
I'll talk about that more in number three. But what I did to keep my fitness up is instead of biking, I would- Take a run or go running. Now it's great since I am a runner, so I just run when I'm on vacation. I don't need very much. I just need to pack my running shoes, and that's about it. And number three, integrate exercise into your trip.
This is my favorite part, and when you really start building this as a routine, [00:09:00] travel can become even more fun. Because instead of looking at it as, "I have to fit my workouts in my travel and my trip and my vacation," you start thinking about how you can make your trip even better by working out. Here's an example.
My fiancee has a very specific exercise protocol that she's doing right now, and, uh, she was really excited about our cruise because we specifically picked, uh, going on a cruise because we knew it'd have a nice workout facility. We also kind of made a guess that it would be with amazing views because we're in Alaska, and Alaska has some of the most amazing views I've seen in the entire world.
And, uh, gratefully enough, we got just that. While she was on the elliptical, she was able to look out in Glacier Bay National Park, one of the coolest places, uh, probably on the planet, at least in North America. So while she's on the elliptical, she's watching glaciers, [00:10:00] sea otters, whales. And this became really a theme for the entire trip, is we would go to work out in the gym, but then we would actually go to the gym and just jump on the treadmill and just walk while looking out at the ocean.
Especially when it was cold outside, we'd rather be in the gym than walking around the deck, cold outside. This was amazing. The other thing is something I started doing long before I was a runner. Whenever I would travel, I would look at where the nearest CorePower Yoga was. And, uh, I had a membership at the time, and I also didn't wanna spend money on Ubers or Lyfts.
So what I would do is route to the studio and take a run to the studio. So I used running, exercise, as a way to get around. Well, on this Alaskan cruise, guess what else I did? I used running as a way to explore Alaska. So we were at this [00:11:00] one stop, Skagway. We went out, walked around the town, and my fiancee went back to chill on the ship.
I went back out and took a couple-hour run, just exploring the trails around, exploring the coast, exploring some of the hills kinda turning into mountains coming out of Skagway. I used it as a way to explore. That's a cool thing. You can really integrate exercise into making your trip even better. Last thing to do, when you book a cruise or you go travel somewhere you've never been before, you can do things called excursions.
You know? And you can either do official ones through cruise ship, you can come up with your own. You can be, you know, in London and go on your own tour of Buckingham Palace, right? You can set these excursions up. Well, what if you set them up with exercise in mind? Well, this is what we did in Ketchikan, Alaska, is we got to Ketchikan and we knew that we wanted to see wildlife.
We knew that probably one of the best ways to do that would be to take a hike. So the excursion that we signed up for was hiking through [00:12:00] a rainforest. Now, Ketchikan, Alaska has 8,000 people and 14,000 bears. So you better believe that we saw seven black bears while doing this hike. It was probably the best part of the trip, and there's a lot of amazing parts of the trip.
But a big part of why it was so great is because we integrated exercise into what we're actually doing on vacation. Now, movement, exercise, working out is one of the best things you and I can do for ourselves. Dr. Peter Attia, the author of Outlive, has research showing that you can decrease all-cause mortality by 35% by integrating a consistent exercise routine into your life.
That's how powerful this is, and that's how powerful it is to make sure you're staying up with exercise, workouts while you're traveling, even if you're not training for anything. Really, we're all training for life, and that's why I've created my three pillars of healthy living guide. Movement, tracking, and accountability.
What I invite you to do is grab your [00:13:00] free copy of my guide. It's linked in the show notes and in the YouTube description, and start integrating it into your life today. At the very least, move more, exercise more, integrate exercise into your trips. If you travel for work, figure out how you can, instead of taking an Uber or a Lyft somewhere, if it's safe, then I highly recommend you walk or run or figure out an exercising way to get to where you wanna be.
And then you can integrate the other two pillars when you're ready. So grab your free copy, the healthy living guide, in the show notes or in the YouTube description, or go to www.athletewithasthma.com/healthy-living-guide. And I'll see you in the next episode.
Thanks for tuning in to The Athlete With Asthma show. I hope today's episode inspired you to overcome any perceived limitations you may have. Remember, your health and wellness journey isn't about perfection, it's about progress. So I [00:14:00] invite you to take a small step right now towards your goals. And if you found something helpful here, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast with others on a similar path.
Until next time, keep challenging yourself and redefining what's possible
