Staying Fit While Travelling: The First Month

When I left Canada, I was determined to stay in good shape while travelling.  I didn’t set my hopes quite as high as staying at the same level of fitness as at home, but I didn’t want to lose all the strength and fitness that I had worked so hard to build.

That said, a fitness-related update is in order.  I’ve been on the road for just about one month, and I’ve been doing pretty well as far as fitness goes.  I’m going to break this post down into two sections:  little things, and activities.

Little Things

By little things I’m referring to quick daily exercises and my physiotherapy.  On a not-quite-daily basis, I’ve been making sure to do a few sets of push-ups (standard, with hands wide apart, and with hands narrow) and at least one centre plank.  I often add in a few side-planks in there as well for good measure.

Even though I haven’t found a pole to use (yet!) my addiction to being upside down is as healthy as ever.  I’ve been working on slowly deadlifting my legs up when I do headstands–and have been getting distinctly better, which is awesome.  Handstands are another daily occurrence, be it in the hotel or hostel room, or out on the beach, or wherever there’s space.  My other goal is to be able to do a successful forearm stand without a wall to help me get my balance.

Gotta represent my beloved pole studio back home: Mynx girls do it upside down!

 

Along with all of that, I’ve been good about doing at least my most basic physio drill everyday.  I have noticed that if I do a lot of walking on days that I haven’t done my physio, my back starts to hurt by the end of the day.  But if I get on my physio early in the morning, it does wonders for the rest of the day.  Also, I’ve been working on my front splits while away and have seen some huge progress on both sides, especially my bad side (where I pulled my hamstring last year).  Pictures of that will be posted once I’m somewhere with enough room to take them–our hotel room is cute but lacking in space.

Activities

O.K. so here’s the fun stuff–so far this trip has been filled with opportunities to be active.  To start with the most simple:  when you’re a backpacker, you walk everywhere.  In the last 3 days, Braydon and I have walked at least 20km just wandering the beach, walking to a pagoda, and exploring.  Needless to say, my walking stamina is increasing dramatically.

Jumping back to our time in Ha Long Bay with the Castaways tour, that was a heavily active three days.  Yes, it was a bunch of backpackers on a boat and island, with beer and not a care at all.  But we all came back complaining of sore arms.  One of my favourite parts of the tour was their rule that anytime someone said the word “ten” or “mine” they had to do ten push-ups.  Sounds easy, right?  Not so much.  You’d be surprised how easy it is to slip-up, and pretty soon you’ve done 110+ push-ups in a 48-hour time span.  Even I was hurting after those.

Kayaking between the islands in Ha Long Bay

Along with the “ten” and “mine” rule, on the tour we did a few kayaking trips, played a ton of beach volleyball, went swimming, and did some of the most intense tubing I’ve ever done.  As I said, I came back quite sore at the end of that endeavor.  I also managed to find a semi-useable pole on the junk boat, and spent a few minutes doing some hangs.

Twisted grip hang on the boat.

In addition, here in Nha Trang we’ve been spending a lot of time on the beach, either walking in the sand, or doing handstands/headstands (along with some beach-bumming and just sitting around).

 

Beach headstands!