T Nation

Best Way to Deal with Travel or Limited Equipment?

Christian Thibaudeau Coaching
#1

Hello Coach - If you’re travelling quite a bit and/or busy. Let’s say you can get to the gym 3x a week for some full body compound lifting.

And the other days you are in a hotel room with limited equipment (no pull up bar even). How would you make the best of it and perhaps produce a different (unique) signal that could induce gains?

Like pushups, handstand pushups, one hand on a chair archer pushups. One leg squats. Stuff like that - would you give me some pointers on how to position these? Should I focus on more challenging variations done for 3-5 reps or should I go more basic and just do high volume calisthenics (some sort of density or rep target…maybe myoreps or rest pause)?

Assumign I can then hit the gym the next day or 2x-3x a week for full compound lifting.

Thank you much.

EDIT: Would you use Neural Charge training? Shadow boxing? Jumping? Jump roping in place? Strcuture a “body-part” split with lots of volume for push or legs? Or do everything at once?

#2

I can’t, except for push ups they are not things I do.

#3

I’ll be honest. When I travel I pretty much always have access at least to some equipment. Even if it’s only light dumbbells. I wrote an article called “The Macgiver workout” years ago that give a few ideas though.

But to take your example; if I did have access to a good gym 3x a week I would not stress over finding muscle-building exercises to do on the other days. While I’m a high frequency guy, 3 hard sessions a week is enough to stimulate some growth and strength gains. It might even spark some new growth because of the increased recovery time. On the other days, if I’m deadset on doing something, or if I was in preparation for a photoshoot I’d likely go out and do some sprints.

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