Anytime, Anywhere

Sometimes you just find yourself in life in places or situations—or even extended periods of time—when training is really a challenge. Going to the gym might not work for you, you may not have any equipment wherever you’re traveling to, and you may just be so busy that you feel like you have to cut out training altogether.

When these times hit you, they hit you hard. It’s time to switch gears and thrust yourself into “Anytime, Anywhere” training.

The fact is, if you’ve been training regularly for a period of time, it really doesn’t take that much to maintain your fitness. Building new fitness and new strength is much more of a time investment. For this training, the is focus purely on keeping what you have. It’s all about getting through these times when training is very challenging, and you just have to do something to try to maintain what you’ve built thus far.

We hope you are inspired by our Coffee Talker‘s guide to training “Anywhere, Anytime:”

Time is of the essence, so we are just going to do one of these exercises per day. The next day, move onto the next exercise, and so on. When you reach the end, start the rotation over again.

1. Push-ups. If you can’t do push-ups on the floor, scale them by doing them onto a raised surface. Anything from a hotel bed, to a business desk will work. You’re going to do a technical max three times, with 30 seconds rest in between. A technical max is when you need to pause, or when you really start slowing down. When you reach that point, start your 30 second rest. Time needed: roughly 3 minutes.

2. Bulgarian split squats. These are the ones where your legs are split apart with one foot on a raised surface, like a bed, behind you. Your front leg is doing most of the work. Lower yourself until your rear leg knee touches the floor, and then raise yourself up to the starting position again. Again, you’re going to do a technical max three times, on each leg, with 30 seconds rest in between. Again, you’re not going to failure—just pumping out reps until you really have to start slowing down. Time needed: roughly 6 minutes.

3. V-ups. In bed! Yes, you can do these right in bed. Just don’t use the mattress to bounce yourself up into the V position. Lay on the bed with your arms over your head and bring yourself up into a V position, throwing your arms, past your knees, and down again. Same protocol here: you’re going to do a technical Max three times, with 30 seconds rest in between. Again, you don’t want to go to absolute failure. Leave a couple of reps in the tank. Time needed: roughly 3 minutes.

4. Pull-ups or rows. The challenge here, if you’re on the road traveling, or you don’t have access to any equipment, is finding a bar you can do business with. For pull-ups, any beam, branch, or bar that is at least shoulder height will do. And remember, any children’s playground is really a great outdoor gym. You can usually find a place to do pull-ups or rows. For rows, you want a bar, or branch that is about waist high that you can hang down from (face up) in a straight plank and row yourself up at about rib height. For both of these exercises, again, you will do three sets of technical maxes with 30 seconds of rest in between. Time needed: roughly 2 minutes.

5. Stair sprints. These are great to do in hotels, or even at the office. For these, you’re going to do one sprint, at top speed, skipping every other step as you run up at least four flights of stairs. If you don’t have to really slow down yet, keep going until you do. This is just one sprint, but give it everything you’ve got.

A note on performance expectations: expect your technical max to drop by at least by half in each set. So if you’re doing 20 push-ups, the first set, don’t be discouraged if you can only do 10 the next set, and five the next set. This is totally normal. It’s a part of this technique to burn you out quickly. It’s that intensity over a short duration of time that’s going to maintain your strength and fitness during these periods when training is a challenge timewise.

Remember, there’s always time to train anytime, anywhere. With just 2 to 6 minutes of effort each day, this program will help you maintain your strength and fitness until you can get to the gym again. In fact, you may end up preferring this kind of training over more traditional training. If so, just keep going. 

We hope you are inspired by the “Anytime, Anywhere” training protocol. The mental fortitude to just get it done is the hardest part. Good luck!

Until next time

Scott and Lennart