Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1555: How to Stay on Track With Your Fitness While You Travel

Episode Date: May 17, 2021

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin cover four steps you can take to stay on track with your fitness and health goals when you are on the road.   The difficulty staying healthy and fit while traveling. (2:08) The importance of movement. (4:20) The challenge of consistency away from home. (6:22) How to Stay on Track with Your Fitness While You Travel. (9:32) #1 – Utilize high frequency and volume training. (12:07) #2 – Employ tension with bodyweight exercises and bands.  (14:34) #3 - Apply priming movements to your daily routine. (21:36) #4 – Focus on your behaviors surrounding your nutrition. (30:01) Related Links/Products Mentioned Flash Sale (Ends Sunday, May 23rd, 2021) - Business Man Bundle 50% off!  **Promo code “BUSINESS50” at checkout** Visit PRx Performance for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout** Rubberbanditz Resistance Band Set Staying On Track with Your Workout Routine As A Business Traveler – Mind Pump Blog MAPS Prime Webinar The 3 BEST Exercises To FIX Your Bad Posture! (DO THESE!) - Mind Pump TV Mind Pump #1490: How To Improve Your Posture Mind Pump #1460: How To Lose Fat Without Dieting Eating attentively: a systematic review and meta-analysis of the effect of food intake memory and awareness on eating Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Layne Norton, PhD (@biolayne)  Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Plum. Alright, in today's episode, we talk about how to stay on track with your fitness while you travel. This is very challenging for people who work out. It's like when they travel, they tend to become less consistent,

diet goes all over the place, and then when they come home, it's hard to get back on track. So in this episode, we talked specifically about how to stay on track, how to stay consistent, maximize your progress if you travel frequently. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, PRX.

PRX makes some incredible at-home workout equipment. In fact, it's the best at-home workout equipment you'll find anywhere. Our entire studio is outfitted with their stuff. They're actually well-known for their squat racks that fold into the wall, so it takes up very, very little space. So if you have a garage at you, park your car, and you can actually fit the squat rack in there, move the car out and it folds out.

Now you have a very stable, strong commercial grade squat rack, but they offer much more. Go check them out and get the Mind Pump discount, which gives you 5% off. Go to prxperformance.com, forward slash Mind Pump, and you'll get that discount automatically at checkout. Also, in this episode, we talk a lot about things you can do while you travel, things you can do at home so that you can become more successful when you travel. Because of that, we've put together a business person bundle. It's actually called a businessman bundle, but it's for anybody who travels. And this bundle includes maps aesthetic, maps anywhere, maps prime and the intuitive nutrition guide. They're already discounted because they're in the bundle, but we're going to take an additional 50% off.

This promotion ends the Sunday after this episode drops. You can learn more at mapsfitinistproducts.com, but make sure to use the code business50, business 50 without a space for that discount. I'm excited about the episode today. So every month our marketing team will send us a message that hey, we would like you guys to talk about this specific topic. We let them do that one time. It's all that we let them drive. That's all we trust them to drive, right? And so, you know, last month that we did the responders, right? Was last month, was that last month? You know, in the month before that,

I can't remember what we did, but every month we do something different. And the one that they sent to us this month, I was really excited about because I really feel like this was the bulk of my clientele. I've shared on the podcast before that, the client that I was most attracted to training was the high performing CEO, VP, type A personality,

kind of on the go. Yeah, traveling a lot, on the move, type of client. And so I really, really am excited to talk about this one today because again, I feel like we haven't really addressed this specific client, but yet I think I trained a lot. Yeah, I mean, all of us kind of came into this my little house. Yeah, all of us came into this field in Silicon Valley, right?

I mean, I started training the late 90s and that's when Silicon Valley was starting to really take off, and a lot of my clients traveled quite a bit. I would say a good chunk, if not half of my clients would travel many times a year. Some of them, every other month, they would be out of the country or out of town. And training people like that was a totally different challenge, right?

It's one thing to train somebody who is in the same place all the time and they can come to the gym and they can create their routine and work out. It's a completely different thing to try to be consistent with your workouts when you're in a hotel, you know, six times out of the year or whatever.

For a whole week, there's time changes, there's hotel food, limitations, and workout equipment. There's just a lot of other factors there to consider that you'd have to overcome a lot of these things and so to be able to have that ready and prepare to give them before they left was like everything. Yeah, now once I figured out how to do this

and how to keep people consistent, because what you do is you just look at the problem, you say, okay, what can we do and how can we make this as effective as possible. Once we kind of figured it out, I remember when this happened for the first time, I had a gentleman that I trained that traveled a lot and he was fit in his youth, he was a boxer in his youth, but then when he became older, he just stopped working out, he had a very successful business and he hired me and he says, look, my health isn't that good.

I'm sort of feeling like some pains, and I just want to be fit. And he goes, but the problem is I travel all the time. He goes, I'm gone for a week out of every month, and that's the challenge. Is there a way that I can stay consistent with workouts when I'm in hotels that oftentimes don't have gyms, or if they do, they'll have like treadmills and like a couple machines like there's not much stuff.

So I did, I created a way for him to train and work out. And I remember the first comment he gave me after doing this for a little while was how much better he was at his job, at his career, right? Oftentimes a big part of his job was to do presentations where he talked to other executives and he's selling them his products and stuff like that. And I remember he came to me, this was like a few months into training and he goes, you know, I hired you for fat loss

and for fitness, he goes, but here's why I'm gonna stay with you. And he did, he ended up training me for many, many years. He goes, here's why I'm gonna stay with you. He goes, I'm better in meetings. He goes, I'm closing more deals, I have more energy. He goes, I'm better at my presentations. He goes, that's why I'm gonna in meetings. He goes, I'm closing more deals. I have more energy. He goes, I'm better at my presentations. He goes, that's why I'm going to keep doing that. Well, it's interesting if you ever have seen

any of these motivational speakers that like get these seminars and a lot of people go to these events and things, like one of the big things that they do is they get people to move and they get people to, in these positions, these power positions, where it just naturally promotes a lot more confidence, a lot more energy. And if you do a workout that's effective like that and it charges you and you bring that

with you into a meeting that's crucial, you're going to perform a lot better. That makes me think of what I would say is the number one challenge with this client, right? It's just consistency. Right. If they're always flying in and out of in and out of town, and so, you know, breaking up that routine that they were in when they were in town with you, always presented a challenge. But if I could just keep them moving and doing something productive as far as like towards

their fitness goal while they were in a hotel gym or even in a hotel room where they didn't have any equipment, I knew that was the first major hurdle. And that took me a minute to piece this together because originally I was like, oh, you know, could you find a gym? We would research like, you know, a gym that's five miles away

and then trying to get them to commit to go pay a day pass and then stay on your program. Stay on what we were following. And I failed a lot. I failed at that because what would happen is they would, okay, well, I can't do it right away. I'll wait till my big presentation or whatever. The day just gets away from them.

So fast. Right. Tired. Oh, I don't feel like doing it. And then it's just like, oh, I got to now get a drive all the way over there to do that. I'm not forget it. And so the beginning, I wasn't very successful with this client, but later on realized the importance of just keeping them active and I needed to learn to modify my program for their lifestyle had way more success.

Yeah, because the here's the two challenges I had. One was like what you said. I'd give I'd they'd have a routine that we're doing and then we'd be like let's find a gym near your hotel. It would almost never work at keeping them consistent. So that was a problem. Then the second one was, okay, just move. Like, just okay, while you're gone, just do something every single morning. Well, that didn't work either because there was no structure

and there was no program. There was no programming. And we talk about this on the show all the time, the importance of, of course, there's benefit to just moving, but there's way more benefit when it's structured and designed in a way for a specific goal, which is called workout program. This is what you do as a personal trainer, among other things, is you understand how to create successful workout programs that give people a lot of bang for their buck.

Because if you only have 30 minutes in your hotel room, we want to make it effective, not just jumping jacks for 30 minutes or just running around the block, but rather something that's effective. And we know that the most effective form of exercise on a time for time basis in terms of adaptations, right? In terms of getting the body to change in a way to where you get these kind of more permanent results where your metabolism speeds up

or your body's burning more calories, where you build muscle, which muscles more permanent than other adaptations, is let's create a resistance training routine that you could do in your hotel room. But then there was another piece and the other piece is this is a very important piece, especially to my people who were traveling frequently is when they were in town, we would ramp up the volume and the training. So they would do more training when they were in town and then less training without equipment, but still structured very effectively when they were out of town.

And to my surprise, these clients, if the ones that were consistent, did just as well as the clients that were seeing me in the gym all the time. And in some cases, actually did better. And to the point where I actually started incorporating some of these things into my other clients' routines as well. Well, that reminds me of that study that I think it was Lane who shared that.

I brought it up on the podcast. And I figured this out, but I actually didn't even know of this study. I didn't know that they actually studied this. But I came to the similar conclusion as you did, Sal, of like they could dramatically reduce their volume during that week of travel or a week in that they were gone. And I would see just as much progress if not more with that client.

And it was kind of baffling. Like, what does it make sense? They're not training as much volume, but yet they seem to be getting at having the same progress or more than my other clients. And then I know that study came out to show that they did that where they compared people that went three weeks on and then took a whole week off, three weeks on, a whole week off,

versus somebody who never stopped. And actually the clients that took the week off, they all did the very same little similar. Right. It wasn't even a difference. Right. And so I've taken this approach too, where I tell a client like, oh, don't worry about it.

Now the problem with that was if I tell them when they're traveling and do something like that, this it's open up a can of worms. Well, it's also one of the more challenging times to eat well, right? And make good choices. So you it's kind of like this, this two pronged, you know, the challenge that we have is not only is it, you know, hard for them because they're on the go, probably sleep is off a little bit, but then in addition that they're not eating very well. And then also giving them the whole weekend saying, ah, don't worry about your workout,

your body needs the rest for the week. They would end up coming back where they put weight on. So all I needed to do was create something for them that they would keep them on their kind of their routine and consistency, but I didn't need to worry so much about while I was doing all this volume last week without him in the gym. That's okay. You'll do fine as far as your progress.

Yeah. And studies actually show that when people stop, that they lose momentum, and then it's harder for them to start up again. You know, they do this with medications, you know, with like the classical birth control pills that women have to take every single day, and they used to give women like a week off. But what they would do is they would still take a pill every day on that week off, it was just a placebo pill, and it was so that women didn't forget that they were on to continue taking the pill.

Well, this is true with exercise. What you find is that when people take it off completely, getting going again tends to be very challenging. So it just takes some of the demanding components of it out. And so that way it gives them more flexibility when they're gone and they don't have access to all the same things. And you know, it seems so daunting a lot of times

that they'll just decide not to do anything at all. And so to be able to just do something to maintain that signal and to maintain your body's function of going through those disciplines is definitely a lot more effective. Yeah, so the first step is really, okay, you travel a lot. Let's look, first let's start with the workouts that you're doing when you're not traveling, okay. How do we make those as effective as possible, considering the fact that you're going to travel,

you know, frequently, or you have travel coming up? Well, the first thing is to make it more of a high volume, high frequency based workout, right? So a full body routine, where you're doing kind of, three days a week of hitting all the muscle groups. And then on the days in between, very much like maps aesthetic, you're doing these focus sessions where you're adding extra volume on the areas you're body that need extra work, right?

So to be a little bit more specific, you would do let's say a full body workout Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but then let's say you're somebody that wants special emphasis on your glutes and your hamstrings. Well then on, you're working those on Mondays, Wednesdays or Fridays, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays and maybe even Saturdays, you're doing

a little extra gluten hamstring work. Then you're picking exercises that are not as intense. Of course, when you're doing high frequency and high volume, you have to modify the intensity. So the harder workouts are on the full body days, on those more focused session type days, it's a little bit less intensity. This is when I like to have people use machines.

I like to have them use cables. I like to have them focus on the squeeze and the pump. And this does, it sets you up beautifully, right? If you did this for three or four weeks, then the next week when you did maybe lower volume, lower frequency type workouts without equipment, you actually come back and you're stronger with better programs.

Well, and this is where like, I actually stopped even getting them to use the hotel gyms because they were so different. Like what they offered. And I just, you know what? I'm going to ride cardio based typically. Right. And you know, and you never know that someone go up to 50 pound dumbbells,

some of them just have dumbbells, some of them have machines and dumbbells. Like, so I stopped even worrying about trying to figure that out. Totally. And just said, what I'm going to do is write you a bodyweight type of routine for you in your room. And then it's easier too for them not to make an excuse, not to get it, you can go down to another floor, then I'm gonna go down the street to a gym that could literally do it in there.

And I know that if I am training like Sal saying, when they're back at home with me, we're hitting a high-volume, high-frequency type of a program that it's gonna do the body good for them to take off this week of hitting that much volume and frequency. And let's just focus on just some body weight exercises inside your room. Yeah, so I used to do, I like body weight in bands or body weight bands in tension are the things that I would employ. Now, you can get very creative with just body weight, even if you're really, really strong, right? So like one way to do this would be to manipulate tension,

right? So I can pause a lunge, for example, just to be a simple example, it mid rep, and I can create tremendous tension in my body and hold that position, doing a static, isometric type contraction, and I can make it quite intense. And studies will show that the benefits from this

are pretty close to what you'll get with weights, especially, especially if it's novel, meaning, especially, if this is how you work out only when you travel. This is what makes it so effective, right? It's different, and it's only when you travel. So you get your body weight exercises, you have your bands, maybe like a stick, I used to tell my clients to get the,

out of the closet, oh hotel, they'd use a stick that they could use for tension or the wall. And then we would do extra, very similar, just like what we do in maps anywhere. In fact, when we create a maps anywhere, I know we all designed it like our clients. It's funny because that's exactly what I had in mind

when we were going through designing a maps anywhere is that that whole, basically where you rack your coats and everything in the closet and you just pull that dowel bar out and that It was very effective to then direct people a lot of times into positions where then they can apply This muscular tension from some of these unique exercises that provide novel stimulus this novel stimulus is such an effective way To basically like interrupt whatever you're doing. So then your body has to respond to something new. You bring that back to you and it translates well to the rest of the work.

Well, this is how I always imagine maps anywhere being used or how I have always used bodyweight training. I've never actually done a full bodyweight training program for, you know, extended period of time. I've just like I've never done a full hit program for an extended period of time. Right, yeah. This way of training, I think, it just, it makes sense to me that this is where you use it when it makes the most sense as far as, I am limited. I can't get to the gym, I'm on the road, I'm in my hotel room.

Oh, you know what? I never do body weight training. I'm gonna do body weight training for this week while I'm on vacation, and you're gonna get tremendous benefit because it's novel and you never do it. Versus if I was training full body at home, and then I continue my full body routine

while my vacation, sure, I may not lose any of my gains that I had before I left, but I'm probably not gonna make very many gains, but you actually will see gains when you take somebody who is used to doing a traditional full body, barbell, dumbbell type of routine all the time at home, and then they go on a trip and now send your hit them with bands,

isometrics and you're doing stuff like body weight exercises. Now their body goes holy shit, this is brand new, and actually they'll come back with gains, which is insane. It is, and another thing is I like daily workouts. I don't like long and frequent workouts. I like shorter daily workouts when travel. So I would tell my clients, do this,

it's gonna take you about 30 minutes. You're gonna do this every single day, here's your workout for Monday Tuesday. And what I would do is I would have these two more intense workouts, but for the rest of the week it was more of this body weight control tension. So to give you an example, it'd be like doing a push-up, right? A traditional push-up is just up and down. Well I would do something like I'd tell the person to extend, grip the floor, twist their arms, or create tension in the floor, to go down really, really slow, pause at the middle, create tension in their back in their chest, go all the way down, do the same thing,

and then repeat on the way up. And you do like five reps of that, and you get like a tremendous benefit from doing so. It's very intense. You're putting more emphasis on squeezing your muscles harder, really connecting to that. And also, yeah, that tempo is such an effective way to intensify exercises. And we've talked about this quite a bit in terms of ways that you can, like variable ways that you can add intensifiers in there. And so to be able to then mess with that a bit,

doing body weight, because that was always a concern from a lot of my clients was, I do body weight exercises, but it's not really that difficult. I don't really know if it's that a bit, doing body weight. Cause I was always a concern from a lot of my clients was I do body weight exercises, but it's not really that difficult. I don't really know if it's doing a whole lot. You know, there's techniques like that that can make it really difficult and challenging. You just have to be able to have the right planning ahead of you.

Yeah, do some tension moves with a stick where you're creating intrinsic tension and then come back and tell me that it's not intense. Oh yeah. Good luck. You're activating lots of muscle fibers. Oftentimes you're teaching your body to activate more muscle fibers

when you do your traditional resistance training workout. That's what the value, by the way, this is old school lifters used to do this all the time for some reason it fell out of favor, but studies, there's lots of studies on this to show that it's a tremendous way to improve strength and build muscle, especially when you add it to a traditional routine.

Well, we could talk all day about the benefits of this as far as like, you know, the tension and building muscle, but honestly, the thing that I found the most value in training this way was, is the behavioral side, is that it's short. It's 20 to 30 minutes is all I'm asking you to do. You don't have to go anywhere. It's designed for you to do it inside your hotel room. What I had just found from that was that, yeah, there's all kinds of great, it's novel

and they never trained these things and so we might actually build muscle. It wasn't even about selling my client on that. I was like, listen, to me, it's the least resistance to get them to like, at least cut through all of your objections. Exactly, that's what I found the most valuable. Which is that is just like, if I made it something as short as 20 to 30 minutes and it was different than what they were doing at home

when they're with me and I encouraged them to do something every single day, but for that short window, it was like, it was very easy to get them to commit like, oh, so I'll just get up 20 minutes earlier and do my routine or between my lunch break, I can do that. There's no excuse then, and it was really easy to get my client to commit to that.

And speaking of behavior, another reason why I like to kind of daily workouts is, in studies, confirm this, when people exercise, more often than not, they're more likely to choose meals that are a little healthier. In fact, one of the easiest ways, by the way, kind of one of the most easiest, most indirect, sneaky ways of getting someone

to watch their diet is to have them start exercising. You naturally, because you're in that mindset of working out and bettering your body, so you start to work out, and then you kind of naturally go, you know, I'm gonna eat a little bit better, a little bit healthier. Especially for people who already work out. If you already work out and then you stop working out,

you'll naturally find yourself trying to eat worse than you normally do because they tend to go hand in hand. Right, I mean, you're working on making yourself feel better and I think too, like there are foods out there you know when you pay attention to when you eat them, like I feel better when I eat this. I feel better when I'm more hydrated. I feel better like that feeling is something

that you start paying attention to more when you're adding more movement and more exercise on your routine. So I also had a lot of success with this, with these types of clients also, when I would use that time that they're on vacation to address kind of the tedious work I knew they needed to do.

Every client that you get first thing you do is you assess them, you check their posture and their mechanics and you see where all the breakdown is, we all have it, right? And I have this list of things that I know they need to address, the forward shoulders, the lack of ankle mobility, the asymmetrical shift. And it's like, and I know that they need to be doing all these little priming type movements and stretches they should be doing and specific like exercises to help combat all those deviations. And trying to get them to do that when they're home and they're training and they're lifting heavy and they're hitting all this high volume stuff was always a challenge. And so I found starting to incorporate that

when there are traveling, so it gave them something to focus on. I knew that them not training, I later on figured out that them not training that high volume wasn't going to hurt their gains and results so they would maintain their gains or possibly get more because I had them doing something different. But then I would also incorporate all this posture stuff

that like we did in like prime in this in this time. Yeah, now of course now for people who don't know priming is a way to get your body to move differently. So it's like it's like a warm up, but it's not. It's much more effective. You're getting into certain positions, activating muscles, increasing range of motion and connection to those new ranges of motion. So improves mobility, movement, and it alleviates pain. It alleviates pain because oftentimes, especially in modern times, much of our pain comes from poor movement

in their chronic forms of pain. It's not an injury, right? So a lot of the time, and it's a big problem with people who travel a lot. Back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain. Now why? Oh, they're sitting on the plane for a long time. They're in fixed positions all day.

Yeah, sitting in a meeting, oh, I'm driving over here. You know, I'm on this hotel bed that's different than my bed with a different pillow or whatever. And so I've got neck pain, shoulder pain, back pain, whatever. So I would have clients do priming movements,

not just before their workouts, of course, but before their meetings, before they're gonna sit down for a long time, before they get on the plane. You know, I had one guy that I trained that he, in fact, he almost had to figure out a way to conduct his business without traveling. Even though it was an imperative part of his business,

he's like, you know, Sally goes, I meet with people in person. It's one of my strengths. He goes, but I almost hate traveling now because my back hurts so much from sitting on a plane. He's like, it kills me and it's almost like I don't want to do it anymore, but I know I have to. So I taught him some, so of course when I trained him, I did correctional exercise, but then I taught him priming movements

to do before he gets on the plane. And even movements that he could do in his chair on the plane, yes, took away his pain and it was like a reinvigorated him with his business. And it was something that I started incorporating with everybody. It was interesting. Yeah, I ran through that same issue because of all the time on the plane, not just being in that fixed position, but like one of my clients that had knee pain. And so, you know, just the pressure of being up in altitude and everything else and being that fixed position for a long amount of time, you know, really started to aggravate

and, you know, really started to aggravate, you know, all these like underlying issues that we were already dealing with. And so to be able to know, you know, I can put my body in this position, I can relieve some pain, and I can keep myself mobile. So then I can enjoy the rest of my trip

and then also apply these same concepts, you know, at the hotel room, or if I know that I have to walk all day long the next day, this is what I'm going to do. All that stuff plays a massive role in the trip. I would sometimes use this. We have maps anywhere when you're referencing the body weight, the tensions, stuff like that. That would be some cases that I would use something very similar to that.

Then I had other times where I would also incorporate prime, like you were saying, when we're talking about the plane and sitting down. But then I also had clients too, where I would actually, their whole week would look very prime-esque. Because what I found was, okay, if you got all these issues, right? And we're lifting with a lot of volume and frequency during the week, and I know you're neglecting to do all the things I'm telling you to do at home because that's just what clients do. And then I got this whole week of you not heavy barbell lifting and dumbbell lifting and kind of a chance for you to recuperate. And then on top of that, I could focus you all around just like posture. That sometimes would be a great week for me

to kind of drill that home for the client, so they could feel it, so they could feel the difference. And again, I knew that they weren't gonna lose these massive gains in a week by not training lifting barbells and dumbbells for one week. They could actually do all these movements and maybe when they came back and saw me, they'd feel much better going into it

and maybe then I could keep them more consistent with doing that before they're routine. Yeah, actually I clients that would, you know, I'd have them do the prime before they're workout. And then we would pick like one movement, one prime movement that's specific, specifically beneficial to them, right? So like, for example, a maps prime,

you take what's called a compass test, and you identify with your specific body, what priming movements work well for your body. With my clients, I would just do an assessment, right? So I do an assessment and I'd say, okay, for you, because you have really bad forward shoulder and forward head and you tend to have neck tension. Here's what I'm going to have you do every single day before you do your meeting. So before you do your meeting, you're going to spend five minutes doing this, you know,

now we call it a wall test. Back then, I really have a name for it, but it was very similar. And we would do this and it would, it's like you're doing traction in your spine, just intrinsically because of the way you're positioning yourself, you're working on that kind of shoulder

and upper back mobility, the scapular mobility, you're working on the neck. And I'd have them do it for five minutes, just do it for five minutes before your meetings. And they would always report that they would do so much better in their meeting. And it's true, I tell you, look, if you've ever sat in a meeting and felt not great

or a little bit of pain, you're just not paying attention as well, you're not as effective, especially if you're a sales person and you're doing sales presentations, like if you don't feel good, you're not gonna be doing as well. If you got forward shoulders and your neck is forward, protrudinguding and everything's sort of

going in that direction and you have to consciously look up, that's a problem. So to be able to do that and to counter a lot of those tendencies, so you're nice and upright, you're alert, your body just responds better to being in that position and receiving information. Well, that's why I liked using this week for that too, and just drilling this.

I mean, you guys, okay, I trained one client, right? I have this one client that I trained, Chris, she's been with me for a long time. She's this very similar to this avatar we're talking about right now. She's, in fact, she's in Cabo right now for a week. Every month she flies out for at least three to five days every single month, minimum. And she's always wanting to keep three to five days every single month minimum. And she's always wanting to keep the routine

that I have around here. And I'm always telling her, I don't want you to do that. And what I've had to drill it down to is I pick two or three movements, I know that it's gonna help her with her posture. And she's got wrist issues, that she's dealing with constantly, she's got hip stuff that she's constantly dealing with, she's got shoulder stuff. And so I take two or three of these movements from prime

and I tell her, when she looks at me all mo, because she's very motivated, right? She's in great shape and she takes a bit of, I met her several times. Yeah, she's in your book, right? She's in the resistance training revolution, right? So she's one of the models in there, she's in incredible shape and she's disciplined.

So she wants to like, you, Adam, tell me all these things to do in the hotel room and I'm like, no, 90, 90, your wrist thing, like I give her like three or four things and just spend 20 minutes on that, spend 30 minutes on it. I find that those, making them do that for that week, I can get them to feel real progress in that

versus when they're home constantly having the conversation, knowing that they're inconsistent with doing it, and them never really, and them going, doing their normal behaviors every single day, working against what I'm trying to combat in the gym versus gym focusing on a few things. No, it's actually a great mental strategy too, because it's like, oh, you're traveling next week,

you're gonna focus on making your shoulder feel better. That's right. We're not doing your normal workout, but you're gonna focus on making your shoulder feel better. That's right. You're not doing your normal workout, but you're gonna focus on making your shoulder feel better. It's gonna take you 15 to 20 minutes every single day. And then when you come home, we're gonna do a normal workout. Your shoulders are gonna be feel better. You're gonna be stronger.

That's right. And we'll get better progress. And the people that did it that were consistent with it, that's exactly what happened. Now, the last point, this is probably the most challenging thing is nutrition when you're traveling. This is very hard for a fitness, even somebody who's consistent with their workouts, this

is difficult because you're not at home, you don't have your groceries, you don't have your what you normally eat, you're eating out way more than you normally do. This is something I have challenges with when we travel, right? It's like we're in a hotel room, we don't have a kitchen, we're not buying groceries. I'm gonna be eating ordering food from restaurants, so I need to figure out ways to help people make better choices when they're eating out, because what tends to happen is calories go through the roof when people are traveling.

And then they come back and they feel groggy, they don't feel good, digestion's off, and you're kind of playing catch up for a whole week. So the challenge with this isn't counting calories and counting macros. That's what I used to do, right? So what I used to do is I would tell clients, okay, you're gonna travel.

Here's what I'm gonna have you do. Here's your protein, your fat, and your carb, goals, now that you're traveling, just hit those every single day and you'll be fine. What a pain in the ass, okay? Number one, you're going to restaurants and stuff, you gotta look it up on your phone. Can I see your menu? What are they cooking this with? I have no idea. And then you're like, forget it.

I'm off the wagon. I'm just going to go crazy and eat a bunch of whatever. Instead, when I started to do that was far more successful. Is that and this is we talk about this all the time on the show. Is we start focusing on behaviors, right? We started focusing on eating in ways to make you feel particular ways, making those connections. This is a longer process, but once you do this, when you go on vacation, balance naturally starts to become the way that you eat, even when you're on a trip, even when you eat out. And I would get clients that would say, oh yeah, Monday, when I got there, I had the pizza or whatever. But then, I kind of felt like I was a little groggy. And so the next day I went to a restaurant and I saw that they had the pizza or whatever, but then I kind of felt like I was a little groggy.

And so the next day I went to a restaurant and I saw that they had steak and vegetable, so I just ate that. And I said, well, why'd you do that? You're on vacation, why don't you eat more pizza? Well, I'm listening to my body and it's just what I wanted. I actually wanted to eat that way. So it's more of a behavioral approach,

and there's a lot more that goes into it. We actually talked quite a bit about it in our intuitive nutrition guide, but as you start to work through these behaviors, nutrition becomes much more of an automatic thing and balances a natural thing that injects itself into your diet versus trying to hit specific macros and meals when you're traveling,

which is almost impossible. Well, yeah, the real work is done before. Like this is not one of those things where, you know, someone listening to the show right now, they're like, hey, I'm traveling next week and I've never followed a mind-cubing-some-hacks. Yeah, right? And then I say, oh, read the intuitive guy.

No, that's not happening. The real work to prepare yourself for a schedule where you travel time is going to take you weeks and maybe months and maybe even years for some people of learning how to build a better relationship with food. And you have to do that in order to have that approach. Otherwise, you go what most people do is when they're consistent at home and they're training, they're on a diet, they're on a regimen, they're restricting, they're saying,

I can't have these things. And then they go on vacation or they're traveling. And it's like all and then when a glass of wine or a slice of pizza comes by they can't just have one because the the chains are free and so they go bananas and they eat tons of that and they drink a ton and so you as a trainer as a coach have to think like okay I've got to address these things first before I set my client off of vacation. How many times have people actually, without realizing it, actually ruined some of the time

that they have on vacation because they ain't the way that made them feel terrible. So it's like they land on Monday, they go out and like you said, Adam, they feel like their chains are off, right? So because it's that mentality, right? It's the wrong mentality. It's like, I'm on a diet, now I'm off, so I'm really off. And then the next day they're like, oh, my stomach was off. I felt so bloated. I've had clients tell me that they don't want to go to the pool

because they felt so bloated for eating terror. And I'm like, you're not in your own evocation to enjoy yourself. And you've got this false idea that enjoying yourself means going crazy in one direction. That one ends up happening. You feel terrible and you actually don't enjoy yourself and this is what this is where real balance kicks in, right? So when you work on this and you do this the right way, you enjoy some of those foods but it's not overboard. In fact, going overboard, you recognize actually doesn't feel good. It's actually not something that you really enjoy.

You know, this is, I don't know if I've told you guys this before, but this is actually where my whole walking after eating started was actually getting clients and myself to do this when traveling. I knew I was flying, I knew I was sitting down all the time. I'm like, I've got to get steps in and movement in. And so I started to create this habit of when I was traveling that I would, you know, after I eat at a restaurant and out, I would, hey, I have to go for a walk now.

I go walk for 20, 30 plus minutes or longer if I could convince Katrina to do that. But really, this is, uh, this is something that I started to bring back home and realize the benefits of it. And so one of the things that I tell clients is just, you got to be mindful of that and the choices that you make, don't tell yourself you can't have it. If you do stuff like that, though, make a conscious effort to go out and just and move and a walk is that simple.

Does it need to be this strenuous training session for an hour and a half, but just being conscious of that and making that extra effort to move? Yeah, I have a similar thing with trying to seek out more fibrous, cruciferous type vegetables. And that's really a digestive thing for me. You know, because I know there's a lot of times too, it's very common for people to get constipated and to have, you know, issues when they're traveling. And then also like a sleep is another big issue. And so like if my digestion is off, like my sleep gets affected.

And then now yeah, I am kind of ruining my trip in a sense to where I'm not enjoying it to the fullest. So that's something that I, if I just seek that and then also, you know, whatever's available, at least I have that to kind of help to mitigate some of the needs. Well, and that reminds me of another thing that started with my clients that were traveling

was teaching them to eat the proteins first Yes, you know proteins the vegetables first. Yeah, that's where this came from I get clients to be like, I'm gonna eat out I'm traveling I'm on the go and stuff like that So you and I don't know where I'm gonna be eating out So I'm here. I'm as a trainer scratch in my head. Okay. I don't know where you're going Like what am I gonna tell you to do right and given you these specific macros? That's a little ridiculous, but giving them a more general simple rule

that I ended up seeing a tremendous value in was like, okay, I'm just going to tell my client, like I'm going to say you can't go to that restaurant, but what I will say is that eat your protein first, go get the meat first, finish all that, then your greens, your veggies and stuff like that. And then after that, if you still feel you're hungry, then you could eat the carb.

And what it ended up happening is the clients would get full before they even get to the car. It's also slowing down when you eat. It's not drinking water while you eat, which forces you to chew your food. It's being present. It's also being aware of satiety, right? There's a difference between, I'm satisfied

and I'm full or I'm stuffed. And that difference is actually kind of big, right? Oftentimes when we're on vacation, because we feel like we're off the wagon, we surpass the tie-a-tie to the point where we feel sick, where we just feel like we're super stuffed. I mean, I remember making this transition for myself, it actually changed my experiences on my vacation.

It used to be when I'd go on vacation, I would just eat a bunch of, all the stuff that I said I couldn't eat when I was at home. I would just eat a bunch of garbage. Once I made this transition, what I started to do is I would enjoy the food that I was eating on vacation.

If I was eating in another place, if I'm eating in another state, and I'm starting to seek out foods that might be specific to that state, or if I'm in another country, I'm gonna try different foods. Now I'm actually enjoying the food rather than doing this kind of gluttonous thing

where I'm just stuffing my face and making myself, you know, not feel good. You know, there's something else that I used to do with my clients, and this isn't something that we always recommend to people, but I did find value with this, with this client, is if they were on vacation or they were traveling like this, and this was the evolution of these apps

when this became so easy to do this is like my fitness pal and fat secret. I wouldn't tell them what they couldn't or couldn't have. I would just ask them to log it in that. And I found that by them just logging in and seeing and not telling them what they- It couldn't have awareness tool. Yeah, just simply that.

Like I'm not gonna tell you, you gotta follow that diet that we've been following or do anything like that at all. Just do me a favor when you consume something. Just throw it in there so I know, and I would present it as a coach. It's like, I just wanna see what you're doing. So I wouldn't put it like,

oh, I'm watching to see how many calories you have or shame you for not getting your, I literally was like adding a little bit of breaks. Yeah, and what I knew was that it would give them those breaks without them even realizing that because they're just becoming aware of like, oh my God, wow, I didn't realize that there's many calories.

Awareness makes a huge difference. I'll use myself as an example, right? I love pasta, of course, I love pasta. I grew up on pasta, but gluten in particular tends to bother me and it tends to make me feel bloated. It slows down my digestion. I get very sl sluggish so because of that awareness, right when I go on vacation and I'm in I can see that Oh, they're serving pasta. Oh, it's gonna taste good But I don't like the way it makes me feel I don't want it. You know, it's not I can't have it

It's I don't want it. Why don't I want it? It's not worth the taste I have from the pasta is not worth how I'm going to feel. This is part of that process of developing a good relationship with food because oftentimes there's many foods that make us feel in a bad way, but we're not even connected to that. What we're connected to is just the experience of when we're eating it. It's like instant feeling. Yeah, it's all it feels so good to eat, but becoming more aware of the effects afterwards can actually get you a point where you look at a food and you go, yeah, I know that'll taste good, but I more aware of the effects afterwards can actually get you a point where you look at a food and you go, yeah, I know that'll taste good, but I actually

don't want that food. And again, you start to create this kind of natural balance. So look, this episode we talk a lot about working out when you travel, about your nutrition when you travel. We actually have a bundle designed for business people. It's actually called the businessman bundle, but it's for business people. It's for anybody. In this bundle is included, maps aesthetic, which would be a workout at home. It's a high volume high frequency workout. While you travel, you have maps anywhere, which

utilizes bands and your body. Great workout requires no equipment. We also have maps prime in there that'll give you the priming movements that we talked about and much more. And then there's the intuitive nutrition guide in there that'll help you develop balance with your diet. It's 50% off right now because of this episode. I know this promotion is gonna expire Sunday after this episode drops. You can go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and use the code business50business50 for that discount.

You can also find all of us on Instagram so you can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin, me and Mind Pump Salon, Adam at Mind Pump Adder. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle

at Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps for performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbumble is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price.

The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.