Avoiding Jet Lag

Series Summary

Staying fit while on the road can be a challenge for just about anyone. Especially for people who travel a lot, exercise usually comes at the very bottom of the list of priorities, right between writing a letter to a grandparent and fixing the fence. Yet, taking this approach to life will soon leave a person feeling overweight and lethargic; people on the go need all the energy they can get.

Since chances are there’s probably not going to be a gym where you’re going, learn how to do without the fancy machines and the mirrored walls. You can work out just as effectively in your hotel room, building and maintaining a level of fitness necessary for all the traveling you’re going to be doing. Staying in shape will also help keep you from getting sick, which tends to happen often for those of us who travel frequently.

In this free instructional video series, learn about some quick and easy exercises you can do in the comfort of your suite, with minimal to no equipment. Our expert will show you how to warm up and to work most of the major muscle groups, helping you to stay physically fit, healthy, and happy.

Video Transcript

"Hi I’m Manny Castro, exercise physiologist. Jet lag is a bi-product of travel. Really what jet lag is is a generalized fatigue due to long static positions. There are ways to avoid being jet lagged and exercise is definitely one of them. In this video clip I would like to show you a few ways to exercise to avoid jet lag. You can even use stretching exercises when you are in a plane, train or automobile to avoid these general fatigue syndromes. Now before beginning this or any exercise program please remember to consult your physician. Before we begin, I would like to talk to you a little bit about the tools we want to use. In most cases a lot of hotels do not have gyms you can go to and exercise in, aside from that even if they do, a lot of people prefer a little more privacy. Now for this particular exercise session, you can use exercise tubing or even your own body weight or exercises that don’t require any kind of weight or tubing at all. Now I will use both variations. I will use exercise tubing to show you a few exercises and I will show you some exercises that don’t require any kind of equipment. So let’s begin. Number one, before you start any exercise program you probably want to as a general rule of thumb, you probably want to use a little bit of aerobic activity to warm up. Now for a warm up, you probably want to go anywhere from 10 minutes to 20 minutes before you start your resistance exercises. Generally what this does is warm up the body, warm up the muscles, allow for the muscles to have more elasticity and increase the aerobic capacity in the muscles. Now the last thing you want to do is when you are traveling is carry around any heavy exercise equipment. An exercise tube kit such as this one comes complete with everything you need to exercise in the privacy of your own room and you can purchase a kit like this at any superstore. Basically it will run you anywhere under $20.00. You can also purchase the tube separately now. A kit like this brings several different things. It brings smaller tubing, longer tubing and also different resistances for tubing. They also bring any hand grips that are required for comfort and as you can see, they are very light to carry and if you throw these in your suitcase, they won’t attract any undo attention and they won’t cause any weight for you to carry."