I just returned from a trip to Western PA, where we celebrated my parent’s 70th birthdays. So if you see Mom and Dad this summer, wish them a very happy birthday.  

I also did some SnapChamping* with my niece and nephew while I was home. On a side note, this is what it looks like when I swap faces with my brother. (And consequently, what it would like like if I didn't pluck my chin hairs for a few months in a row).

Freaky right? I always knew we looked a bit alike. 

Aside from trying not to feel 110 years old while playing with technology, I also managed to get a workout in, which was an accomplishment for me.

Like many people, I struggle to workouts when I travel. I’m a creature of habit and much like my struggle to train around an injury, any kind of travel throws me completely off kilter. (And as I’ve mentioned before, kilter is where it’s at. I don't know what it is, just that I want to be there). Once you take me out of my regular gym and regular routine, I feel lost. Add the exhaustion of traveling on top, and it becomes that much more challenging to make exercise a priority.

Before your next trip, rather than bagging your training altogether, try some of these tips to help get a workout or two in the books. 

1. Set a workout goal before the trip

I’m notorious for packing workout clothes* with good intentions and then not following through. My last two trips to PA however, I changed my approach. I both packed some workout clothes and set a very specific goal of hitting a minimum of one workout. I was gone for four days this past weekend, and two of those were travel days. But my goal was one good workout, which was much more doable than three. 

I set the minimum standard of one because I knew I could do that. Had I set my goal at three, I might have realized on day two that I couldn’t possibly achieve that number, and that would have made it easier to bag all three. So for this trip, I set the bar low enough to trip over. 

And I tripped over it. Win. 

2. Choose a travel workout that you can do for your destination

At Spurling, we provide all of our clients with travel workouts upon request. Some clients are off on business trips with no idea what the hotels might be like, and others are off on beach vacations and camping trips.  

Depending on needs, we design either a bodyweight circuit, or a more advanced circuit if the client happens to own a band or a suspension training system. Speaking of which…

3. If you travel a lot, consider purchasing two pieces of equipment

My parents clothesline pole made a perfect spot for a 20 minute circuit. No, I didn't crack the cement at the base of the pole. At least I don't think so...

I take two pieces of equipment with me when I’m on the go. A Jungle Gym **(suspension training system), and a band. Both sound fancier than they are. The suspension training system is this: two handles that can be wrapped around a tree (or my parents clothesline pole), or closed in the door of a hotel room. It costs 50 bucks on Amazon. 

The band costs less than 20 bucks. 

With those two pieces of equipment I can get in a full body workout that burns calories and fries my muscles. 

4. Plan the workout routine before you travel

If you happen to have a coach, ask him or her for a workout plan before you leave. If you don’t, you can google bodyweight workout that you can do in your hotel room, on the beach, or next to the pool. Or while your dad is mowing the lawn...(If you don't know what these exercises are, head on over to my YouTube channel where you will find many of the videos for these.

A1. TRX Rows
A2. TRX Jump Squats
A3. BW Lunge with Overhead Reach
A4. Jumping Jacks
A5. TRX Bodysaws
A6. Banded push press

If you don't have any equipment you could do this routine:

A1. BW Squats
A2. Jumping Jacks
A3. Push Ups
A4. Single Leg RDL
A5. Plank
A6. Mountain Climbers

Do this routine three-five times with roughly 10-12 reps per exercise and I promise you, you’ll feel less guilty about that margarita with dinner.

And don’t feel guilty about a margarita. You’re on vacation. 

*I know it's actually SnapChat, but to be clear, that's all I know about it.. 

** TRX is a brand of suspension training system, so you'll see many exercises described as TRX, which is less of a mouthful than Jungle Gym. 

Quote from a client last week:

"I didn't gain 40 pounds overnight. So I'm not going to lose 40 pounds overnight."

I followed her statement with 17 high fives, a cha cha dance, and a bear hug. (It's okay, she was cool with it.) We were having a conversation about what it takes to stay focused on your fitness routine when you're not seeing the changes, especially on the scale, that you want to see after a few solid weeks or months of training.* 

And I thought her above statement was spot on. We put weight on for a variety of reasons over the years; stress, having children, slower metabolism, maintaining the same diet at 41 as we did at 21, and when we start the journey to take off some of those pounds, the process can feel maddeningly slow. 

So how do you find a way to keep on keeping on when you haven't seen immediate results? 

1. Focus on consistency

Are you getting to the gym three days a week? Have you been doing that for the past month, when you weren't going at all two months ago? That is progress. The saying that has been all over fitness websites recently is that your best rep scheme is 3x52. Show up three times a week, 52 times a year and you WILL see results. I promise. Are you going to see all of those results after only one month? No. 

I know that you want the needle on the scale to move. I know this. And I know you want the waist measurements to go down. And the body fat percentage to go down. But focus on building the routine. The results will follow. 

2. Throw the *^%%$*& measuring stick out the window.

What is your measuring stick? One of the other mom's at the soccer game? The woman next to you on the treadmill? Gwyneth Paltrow? Your scale? What is it? Who is it? 

Throw it out the window. Yes, I just said to throw Gwyneth Paltrow out the window. And I meant it. You've been lifting. You can take her. Comparison is one of our worst enemies. 

3. Focus on performance goals

I'm willing to bet 50 yard line seats to the Pittsburgh Steeler-Baltimore Ravens game that by the time you work your way up to a bodyweight deadlift, you will have seen the results I asked you not to obsess about in number one. 

Change the focus from losing to gaining. Yes you want to lose body fat, but place the focus on your performance - the number of push ups you can do - whether or not you can deadlift your bodyweight - whether or not you can do a chin up - I promise that if you focus on these numbers and not the other numbers, and if you don't eat like a tool** you will see results.

I mean I'm willing to bet Steelers' tickets on that.***

And speaking of results, let's do the math on progress. Say you've been doing 15lb dumbbells for three sets of 10. That's 900lbs your lifting. If you can up that to 20lbs, that means you're lifting 1,200lbs. That's 300lbs more. 

300. Pounds More. 

Don't worry about the scale not moving. Because you can now break it with your bare hands. 

4. Find good people for your corner of the ring

I went to my first cornfield party when I was 16 or 17 years old - we were somewhere in rural Western Pennsylvania, there was a keg, red solo cups, and it was November....Someone had the good sense to burn a tire for heat, and the gathering ended with someone yelling cops and us scattering all over the place.

But what I remember most about the party was people coming up to me and taking my one beer out of my hands (I didn't like the taste anyway). They asked what I was doing there. I remember one guy especially telling me that I was a great softball player, was going to get a scholarship, and that I shouldn't be messing around at parties and lose that opportunity. As he dumped my beer out.

Despite the fact that we were all teenagers with under-developed frontal lobes, most folks knew I wanted to be an athlete and they were encouraging me to stay true to that journey. 

You need to find those kind of people to support you on your journey. You need to find the people who remind you to focus on you and feeling better and that you matter and are important and that good things will happen.

Find these people. Keep these people. 

5. Have a "go to" workout

I'm laid back about most things in my life. I rarely have opinions on plans, restaurants or the organization of my closet. I'm so type B I'm almost a Z. Except with my workouts. I am obsessed with doing whatever routine my coach wrote for me that day. It's taken me a long time to come up with a secondary plan for days when I'm short on time or nursing some minor injuries.

What is plan B? Well, I have a movement day that I keep in my program. And my movement day means that I'm at least going to the gym and foam rolling, warming up, and then doing 3-5 exercises. On days when I'm not feeling up to it, I get to the gym just to do this 20 minute workout. What I've found is that sometimes I feel good enough after the warm up to do the original workout. The key for me is having something in my back pocket that I gives me permission to go easy, but still gets me to the gym.

It keeps me in the routine. 

*By now, most of you know how I feel about using the scale to measure your progress. 

**It's important not to overlook this piece. You can't out-train a really poor diet. But let's focus on building the habit of getting to the gym first. 

***If anyone has tickets to the Steelers-Ravens game....I can be free. 

Sunday morning I tossed up a post about not sleeping. 

Specifically, I wrote about whether or not ignoring your sleep habits could be one of the key missing components in your effort to lose weight and get yourself and your body back in whack. (It stands to reason that if you're out of whack, then whack is where you'd like to be.) 

The short answer is yes, sleep is crucial for health and fitness. But it's one thing to know you have trouble sleeping and another thing to figure out what to do about it. 

I often have trouble falling asleep at night. Knowing this, I put off getting into bed. Because my first two hours in bed are usually a party for one on the hamster wheel of life. But the cycle continues, as I go to bed later and later because I hope that by getting in bed later, I'll fall asleep sooner.  

And also I want to poke people who just fall asleep when their heads hit the pillow. Or who nap on airplanes.

There's a good chance these are morning people. In theory, sleep should be pretty straight forward. When it gets dark outside, we observe the rules of our circadian rhythm, and go to bed. Then we wake up when it's light out. 

But that's only theory. 

The reality is that most of us get in bed when it's dark out and then spend another 30 minutes or more on our phones or other electronic device. 

If nothing else, you've learned about my spectacular decisions regarding my hair while reading this blog. 

Replacing my books with the kindle app on my iPad was likely the worst decision I made since frosting my hair.  

And I think we can all agree, looking at the picture off to the right, that was a bad idea. Because, you know, blonde on me is actually orange.

1. Put the screen away two hours before you go to bed. 

Do yourself a favor, and as hard as this is, try to eliminate screen time for an actual two hours before you go to bed. Because I currently spend a lot of time in the car, I have an Audible subscription and listen to a lot of books on tape (because I can't stop calling them books on tape even though we passed tape in 1994.) 

The small amounts of light from these devices pass through the retina into a part of the hypothalamus, the area of the brain that controls several sleep activities, and delay the release of the sleep-inducing hormone, melatonin. 

And let's face it, sending work emails or worse yet, reading work emails in the last few minutes before bed does little to soothe the mind. A stressful email read can elevate your cortisol levels at the exact time when you need them to be lower.

2. Make the room as dark as possible.

And speaking of melatonin levels, one sure-fire way to suppress them is to let a bunch of artificial light in. Aside from the occasional hotel room, I don't ever remember sleeping in total darkness. Whether it was from a street light outside or a digital clock, there was always some type of light in my room. 

Since I've started sleeping with a mask over my eyes, I've slept a little bit better. Not a lot, but a little. 

3. Kick the cats off the bed. Seriously. Do it.

We have two cats. I don't really talk about it because dogs. Specifically, Rooney. But Rooney sleeps in his own bed in his own room downstairs, because he would take up the entire bed and also dog fur.

The cats however, are a different story. And I don't know about you, but like any ridiculous pet owner, I don't feel like I can disturb the cats when they take up all of my foot space and I end up chewing on my knee caps to sleep around them. 

Do yourself a favor and kick them off. They will move, and if you're lucky, they will re-locate to their own beds. 

BECAUSE THEY HAVE SEVENTEEN OF THEM.

4. Get nine hours of sleep

Hahahahaha...oh wait, you're not kidding?

That's about how I feel when someone suggests nine hours of sleep to me. And I don't even have kids. On days when I have to be at the facility by 5:30 a.m. and I'm an hour away, I'm getting up before 4:00 in the morning. Nine hours of sleep would require me getting into bed at 7:00 p.m. 

And on those nights, even if I did get in bed at something reasonable like 9:00, I still wouldn't fall asleep. So I know that at least twice a week, I can't get nine hours of sleep. But I can work towards that average on the other days. 

5. Limit caffeine intake

Hahahahaha! Oh wait, this one too?

Part of my current cycle is lacking sleep and using caffeine to fuel myself throughout the morning, and sometimes into the afternoon. The reality is you should cut off the caffeine in the morning, and worst case scenario, nine hours before you go to sleep. 

Swap that 2:00 diet coke out for a nap. 

Oh right, you probably can't do that at your desk. Instead, swap the mid-afternoon caffeine out for a short walk, outside, around the hallways, or what-have you.

I realize that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of dealing with the maddening struggles of sleep quantity and quality. For a more in depth look at sleep, check out this article by the maker of Athletic Greens on sleep and cortisol levels.