Botox and Burpees
Botox and Burpees
S06E115 Hotel and Travel Workouts
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Travel Workouts: Fitness Tips and Routine Ideas on the Go
In this casual episode of Botox and Burpees, Dr. Sam Rhee shares insights and experiences on maintaining fitness while traveling. Drawing from 14 years of CrossFit experience, he offers practical advice on balancing workouts with the challenges of travel.
The episode includes tips on adapting gym workouts, being open to new fitness opportunities, and four specific travel-friendly WODs (Workouts of the Day): an adapted Outlast WOD, a go-to Tabata workout, the intense 'Hotel Hell', and the classic 'Cindy'. The host also emphasizes the importance of being kind to oneself and adapting workouts to suit the limitations of travel. Listeners are encouraged to share their own travel workout experiences.
"Hotel Hell" with Spealer and Khalipa - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5yX9TaJIyM
#TravelFit #AdventureWorkout #HotelGym #FitnessOnTheGo
#CrossFitTravel #TravelerFitness #WorkoutAnywhere #StayActive #ExploreAndExercise #BotoxAndBurpees
Hi, welcome to another episode of Botox and Burpees. This is a pretty casual episode. It's me talking about hotel and travel wads. If you've been traveling, you know that it's pretty hard sometimes to exercise. So let's talk a little bit about what it's like to travel and then to also try to exercise at the same time. I know that over the past 14 years of CrossFit, I have traveled quite a bit and I've also tried to work out at the same time. Probably the first thing I would say is I try not to be too hard on myself when I'm traveling. Usually I am not at my physical peak with jet lag, lack of sleep, all the activities I'm usually doing if I'm on vacation or if I'm working abroad. And so I think the biggest thing really is to give yourself grace when you're working out abroad. Don't try to do too much. Don't almost die like I did uh when I was uh on a recent trip. I did a really heavy workout at the hotel gym, and then we went snorkeling, and I basically almost drowned. My legs were so tired from the workout, and I didn't realize just how wiped I was that I was dog paddling and sucking water through my snorkel like nobody's business. And if it wasn't for another boat that was pretty close, it would have been scary. So make sure that when you do work out, you're not killing yourself in the process. It's really just to make sure you're not maximizing your fitness, but just maintaining your fitness. Other tips I would say is try to be open to new opportunities when you're traveling. If you can go to a nearby CrossFit gym, that's great. I've done that quite a bit. Some gyms are great, some are not so great. It's always an interesting experience. It's a little scary, I have to admit, going to a new gym. I remember going to one in Dubai. I almost literally left the neighborhood. I got dropped off by the Uber, and it was a kind of sketchy little sort of auto repair district, and I didn't even know if I should go into the building. It was so sketchy. And then I ended up going. No one was nice. I still thought about leaving. I ended up staying, and I got a good workout in. So at the end of the day, just roll with it, see what you can get out of it. I think at the end of the day, I was glad that I did that, and you probably will too. You can try different things. On this last trip, I did some Matt Pilates classes with my daughter, which weren't one of them wasn't so bad, one of them was really bad. Um I would just say don't try anything really unusual or something overly strenuous where you could be injured. Um, you know, but if they have some sort of hotel offering um in the morning, you might just try it. Maybe it's a yoga class, maybe it's some sort of uh other body weight type of motion class. Um maybe it's meditation, like you know, be open and uh you never know. You might find something that you might really like. Um the other thing is that when you do work out at hotel gyms or non-crossfit gyms, just be aware that you might get some stairs. You might like that, you might not. Some people um have asked me what I'm doing, others really don't like when someone looks crazy working out in the gym when they're working out and doing their treadmill or you know, whatever. Um, I would say don't drop dumbbells, don't be noisy, um, no grunting. Uh, just be mindful for others. I'm always really careful to try to pick workouts where I'm not taking over like 15 areas, and um and then I also try to really make sure I clean up, wipe everything down, because I'm usually sweating all over the place. Uh so if you are uh a good citizen, probably you'll you'll do just fine. So um let's talk about the four workouts that I did while I was on vacation over the holidays. You know, you could probably, if you've crossfit for a while, adapt any workout to what you do, like where you are. And um sooner or later you kind of figure out whatever you want to do, you can always Google and figure out something that sort of fits your needs. Um the first workout I'm going to talk about was actually an outlast wad. It was one that was recently programmed at our gym, Outlast Fitness. Um, and it was a very simple workout. It was five to six sets, five double dumbbell deadlifts, four double dumbbell hang cleans, three double dumbbell shoulder to overhead, and that whole complex needed to be unbroken. So five deadlifts, four hang cleans, three shoulder to overheads. And then it was uh one minute of a machine of choice. So I adapted this because actually the hotel I was at had a lifting platform, and I said, you know what, let me just use a barbell instead for this. Um, probably a mistake because that barbell was so rusty, it barely turned. It was like breaking my wrist as I was doing it. Um, so I went very light. Uh I went 95 pounds, and then um there were some people on the machines, like there was actually a concept two rower and some treadmills and a uh a bike, but instead I just you know did a couple burpees in place because you know I didn't want to keep running over to the machine five or six times uh and interrupt people. So it was totally fine. And it got me a quick workout. I didn't, it was an untimed workout, so I didn't have to do it for time. I just did it as I felt and got me through that day, right? So if you want, take any workout that is at your gym, fit it to what you think you want to do and what's available, and that probably will work just fine. The second workout I'm gonna talk about is one that I almost always do when I travel. It's a go-to workout. I can only do it once when I travel. If you ask me to do it a second time during the week, I will not do it. But I will always do it at least once if I'm traveling somewhere. And it's a tabata. Tabottas are definitely great workouts. Um, they add some urgency to your workout when you don't feel very motivated. And um, if you know what a tabata is, it's basically 20 seconds of work, 10 seconds of rest, and you just populate it with a bunch of movements that you want. So a typical tabata for me has five movements. I'll do, for example, hang dumbbell snatches for one, burpees for two, push-ups for three, sit-ups for four, and maybe like a dumbbell thruster or shoulder press with dumbbells for five. So if you do eight rounds of that, it's uh two minutes and 30 seconds for that total cycle. If you do five movements and you repeat that eight times, you'll get a total workout of about 20 minutes, which is more than enough. Like you might not think 20 on 10 seconds is much, but when you get to round three or four, you're you're dying. Like it's a lot. And the great thing about a Tabata is that you are moving at your own pace, but it's only for 20 seconds, so you do feel like you can push the intensity each time. And you can substitute any movement you want. I've done jump rope, I've done lunges. I usually try to put some sort of dumbbell stuff because usually hotels have dumbbells, but you could do straight body weight if you want. So pretty much anything you want, you could put in there and into a Tabata setting, and it would work great for you. If you want to make it really horrible, you could do six movements, and eight cycles would get you 24 minutes. I've tried that, that is too much for me. Usually 20 minutes is enough, but maybe you're feeling awesome on a particular day and you want to really push it. So I always try to put a core movement in, a shoulder movement, a head-to-toe, like um full body, like a thruster, or goblet squat type movement, and some sort of press movement. So uh whatever works for you, have at it. You can be super creative. Like I said, just don't ask me to do it twice in a week. The next workout I'm gonna talk about, I've only done a couple times when I'm traveling just because it's so crazy bad. And this is Hotel Hell. Um, you probably might know it if you're an OG Crossfitter. Uh, Chris Spieler and Jason Khalipa did it in 2011. I will include the YouTube link in the notes because it is such an awesome video. They're literally in a hotel gym, like a holiday in or something, with a bunch of um treadmills and you know stuff like that. And they they do this workout and Kalipa basically just gets destroyed. The RX version is a hundred squat clean thrusters, so clusters, right? Um, every minute on the minute, starting with the first minute at minute zero, five burpees. So the RX is two thirty five dumbbells or twenty five dumbbells for the women. And this is no joke, like the worst. Um you'll do like the first two or three minutes and get a ton of reps out, like maybe 20 to 30 or 40, you know, even 40, and you'll feel like, okay, I can get this done super fast. And then you'll hit a wall somewhere, and just every every minute, just you start doing fewer thrusters and doing more burpees, and it just feels like you're going downhill quick. For me, I modified this one. I usually uh I did do it as written um back in I actually wrote it down, it was very funny in 2022, and that was 1847, and that was probably one of the worst travel workouts I've ever done in my life, and also people were staring at me because it was not um I looked like I looked a sight for sure. Um this time I modified it. I did uh three burpees instead of five, and I did thrusters, not hang clean thrusters, so it's a little bit easier, and I got this finished around 11 minutes, still pretty rough. Um, but I really felt like when I was done that I got some real fitnessing in and I could go about the rest of my day, you know, doing my tours or whatever, and and not feel like I didn't put some effort in. So um definitely check that uh video out. I think uh Hotel Hell is definitely great uh if you want some pain in a quick in a quick sub-20 type of workout. All right, the last one um I'm gonna talk about is Cindy. Um I actually recorded a quick video when I was traveling this past couple of weeks um as soon as I was done doing the workout. So I will include that video right now. And here you go, you can watch that. Me talking about Cindy as soon as I was uh as soon as I was done with it.
SPEAKER_00:Hi everyone. The next workout is one that I just did. It is, of course, the classic Cindy 20-minute amrap, five pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 air squats. Uh this one you can do anywhere, obviously. You don't need anything other than a pull-up bar. Unfortunately, I am at a hotel gym that has a pull-up bar, which is actually part of their lift cage. Uh, fortunately, there wasn't anyone around using the lift cage, so I was able to just sit here in the middle of the cage and do my pull-ups, push-ups, air squats. It is pretty shoulder heavy, so you may obviously sub whatever you want instead of the movements that are listed. Sometimes I will sub V-ups for pull-ups or for the push-ups, depending on how my shoulder feels. Uh today I felt pretty good, so I just did five strict pull-ups and then the 10 push-ups as well as the 15 air squats. Um, I always start slow, especially since I usually don't warm up. And I did uh 14 rounds. Um, it got real slow, somewhere in the uh 10 to 15 minute range, even though I'm pretty decent at pull-ups for the most part. I usually think of the air squats as the rest part of it, and I always try to make sure that my pull-up form and uh push-up form are good. I always try to think about touching my chest and my thighs down together as well as coming back up, so I'm not trying to flex my hips on the push-ups or try to shimmy the pull-ups, as uh many of us do when we get tired. Coach Bobby always says it's alright to use a little bit of body English uh up at the top. I try not to, only because I know if I start using a little body English, a little becomes a lot after a certain amount of time for me. Most people will find a decent pace for this one and stick with it. Obviously, it's very easy to go out too hot. I know it's just the beginning of the year, but it's never too early to think about MERF in a couple months. It's always a nice one to knock out. Doesn't take up much space, and like I said, you can sub in anything else you want. If you want to do lunges instead of air squats, if you want to do um step-ups, whatever works for you. I think uh it's a great simple workout. Knock it out in 20 minutes, and then if you feel like you have to do anything else, go for it. I think it just goes to show that with CrossFit, you don't really need weights. A lot of times when I go to a hotel, I feel pissed off if they don't have dumbbells or at least something. And this is something that you literally don't need anything. And uh sometimes when you travel, that's that's exactly what you need.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so those are the travel wads and hotel wads in a nutshell. Um, I have been in places literally where I had nothing but my hotel floor and I still was able to get a workout. I've also been in places where there's a lot of fancy stuff. Um I feel like the longer you've crossfitted, the more you feel confident that you'll be able to get a workout if you really want to, just about anywhere, like anywhere. It doesn't matter where you are. Um, I know a lot of you have awesome travel wads and have a lot of experiences traveling and doing workouts. So please share yours with me. Um I'd like to hear about your experiences traveling and working out. Um please message me on Instagram at Botox and Burpees Podcast or leave a comment on my YouTube channel at Botox and Burpees. Uh look forward to hearing from you in terms of what you like to do when you travel, um, other than just drink a lot of frozen margaritas. And uh thanks very much until next time.