Travel & Fitness Post

In the Fitness World the F.I.T.T. formula is applied to workouts to help:

• prevent boredom and burnout

• extract optimal benefits from your workout

F.I.T.T. stands for:

Frequency

• How often you perform an exercise (i.e. how many times per week)

Intensity

• How hard you work when you perform the exercise

Time

• How long you perform the exercise for

Type

• The type of activity you do

Maintaining a regular fitness regime on the road is challenging. The benefits, however, make it worthwhile.
Being fit is part of being healthy and who wants to be unhealthy in a foreign country where the quality of medical services is unknown? Exercise can also help relieve stress. Certainly culture shock, homesickness and travel in general can be quite stressful. Here are some things to keep in mind when using the F.I.T.T. formula to help you stay healthy and fit abroad:

Frequency

• Aim to perform 1 exercise for each fitness component 3 times per week.

Fitness components = cardio; muscle conditioning; flexibility

Intensity & Time

• Once at your destination start light (e.g. easy exercises for 10 minutes). As you become acclimatized to your new environment and the effects of jet lag wear off, increase the intensity and duration of your workouts.

Type

• Cardio – For warm destinations: jogging, swimming & For cold destinations: cross-country skiing, snowshoeing

• Muscle Conditioning – Use body weight, resistance tubing (fits nicely into your suitcase) or dumb bells (if you have access to a gym)

• Flexibility – Stretch after a busy day of site-seeing; hold yoga poses that stretch your muscles (e.g. downward dog for calves and hamstrings or pigeon pose for hip flexors)

My leg, hiking shoe and walking pole.
Photo by Kimberley (c)2013