The Best Hotel Gym Workout to Help You Keep Training on the Road

There was a time when working out while traveling meant calisthenics training, walking, and maybe some travel-sized resistance bands. But if your destination includes a hotel, chances are you may have access to a hotel gym — and then your possibilities really open up.

With a hotel gym, gone are the days you’ll have to resort to endless jumping jacks and burpees. While it may not be as flashy as your fav commercial gym, hotels have sneakily become a great resource on the road. From cardio machines to well-stocked free weights, you’ll often have everything you need to maintain the bulk of your fitness routine.

The unique environment of a hotel gym is also an opportunity to dial in your focus and hammer out some great travel workouts. Whether you’re a newbie or a pro, here is the best hotel gym workout for your experience level.

Best Hotel Gym Workout for Every Experience Level

• Best Hotel Gym Workout for Beginners
• Best Hotel Gym Workout for Intermediate Lifters
• Best Hotel Gym Workout for Advanced Lifters

Best Hotel Gym Workout for Beginners

Beginner workouts don’t necessarily need to be easy. Although you may just be starting out, cranking some high-intensity training and building your full body is absolutely achievable from the hotel gym. 

Aim to include the fundamental movement patterns that you can do with the limited equipment you may have access to. You’ll be sweating in no time.

The Workout

Try to take a squat or press and transform it to your needs based on the equipment you have available. You may not have access to your full sweep of equipment, but you can still use basic, beginner-friendly exercises across the board. Here’s a full-body dumbbell workout that newbies can take on the road with them. 

• Goblet Squat: 3 x 10
• Dumbbell Floor Press: 3 x 12
• Bent-Over Dumbbell Row: 3 x 12 per side
• Dumbbell Lateral Raise: 2 x 15
• Dumbbell Reverse Lunge: 2 x 15 per leg
• Dumbbell Skull Crusher + Dumbbell Biceps Curl: 2 x 12 per exercise
• Plank: 3 x 30 seconds

Note: If you’re pressed for time or want to focus on cardio, try combining these exercises into a circuit!

Best Hotel Gym Workout for Intermediate Lifters

At the intermediate level, you’ll likely be more accustomed to using barbells for your training at your commercial or home gym. Most hotel gyms won’t have barbells or weight plates, so you’ll have to make do with what you’ve got.

[Read More: The 18 Best Pre-Workouts of 2023, RDN-Approved (Personally Tested)]

Here, you’ll take the equipment you have and apply some intensification techniques to compensate for the lighter and less versatile weights that you’ve got at your disposal.

The Workout

Unilateral training will be your friend at the hotel gym. Using single-leg or single-arm variations of big compound exercises is helpful when you have less load than you’re used to. 

Applying tempo training or other intensifiers (like AMRAP — as many rounds or reps as possible — or drop sets) can also help you get that end-of-set intensity you need. Bodyweight exercises are still at your disposal too, but you’ll want to tuck them towards the end when your fatigue becomes an asset for pushing you toward failure.

• Tempo Front-Racked Dumbbell Squat: 3 x 10 with 3-1-1-1 tempo
• Tempo Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift: 3 x 10 with 2-1-1-1 tempo
• Single-Arm Dumbbell Row: 3 x 12
• Standing Dumbbell Shoulder Press: 3 x 12
• Dumbbell Floor Flye + Floor Press: 3 x 15 and 3 x 10
• Walking Lunge: 2 x AMRAP
• Crunch: 2 x AMRAP

Note: Tempo is read as follows: 3-1-1-1 would represent a three-second eccentric phase, one-second pause, one-second concentric phase, and a one-second pause between repetitions.

Best Hotel Gym Workout for Advanced Lifters

Don’t worry: advanced lifters can, indeed, get a tough workout in a hotel gym. While you may not have access to max loading and some of the higher-end strength training equipment, your experience certainly is. 

[Read More: World’s Simplest Hotel Workout (Beat Travel Fatigue!)]

Use your knowledge and training experience of the biggest bang-for-your-buck exercises here to maximize your results. You may not increase strength or build muscle on your travels, but you’ll likely give your body the training stimulus it needs to keep up your progress.

The Workout

While the work itself is always demanding, the foundational skills and strength you’ve developed should ensure a solid workout. You can bridge the gap at a hotel gym with even a moderate set of dumbbell exercises and bodyweight moves.

You’ll fatigue the muscles in your upper and lower body earlier in the workout instead of doing the heaviest lifts early. This way, you’ll accumulate even more fatigue so that relatively light weights will feel heavier. Don’t forget to do a dynamic warm-up first.

• Walking Lunge: 1 x AMRAP
• Single-Leg Romanian Deadlift: 3 x 8 with 2-1-1-1 Tempo
• Bulgarian Split Squat: 2 x 15 + bodyweight drop set to failure
• Paused Front-Rack Dumbbell Squat: 2 x 8
• Push-Up: 1 x AMRAP
• Paused Dumbbell Bench Press: 3 x 12
• Barbell Overhead Press: 2 x 12
• Barbell Row: 3 x 10 + drop set to failure
• Leg Raise + Crunch: 12 reps + AMRAP

Hotel Gym Workout Modifications

While there are some solid workouts available to you regardless of experience level, training at the hotel room might not always be as straightforward as planned. Available equipment or time might throw a wrench into your workout program. Leverage calisthenics, pre-exhaust techniques, and extended sets to maximize your results.

Calisthenics

When you’re short on barbells, dumbbells, or machines, your trusty body weight is always there to support you. A heavy dose of calisthenics training is a fantastic way to emulate many (if not all) of the major exercises you’d seek out in the gym. 

[Read More: The Best Upper Body Workouts for Strength, Muscle, Bodyweight Training, and More]

Depending on your experience level, you can lessen or increase the intensity of your bodyweight work as needed. Swap in push-up variations like incline push-ups if you need to take it easier and pike push-ups if you’re aiming to up the ante. With your body weight at your disposal, you won’t need to miss a day of training.

Pre-Exhaust

Not having access to your regular load on the bar — or indeed, a bar at all — may well be your number one concern when you’re training from your hotel. How much weight or what kind of machines are available dictates what style of training can get you the most bang for your buck. 

[Read More: Try These 5 Hotel Room Workouts to Stay Fit on the Road]

Pre-exhaust training techniques are a clever way to make even light loads more effective for the muscle group you’re interested in. Performing a high repetition set or two with dumbbells or bodyweight puts some strategic fatigue on your muscles. Then, load up your exercises with whatever you have and train as normal. You’ll have an easier time getting that exhaustion you’re after.

Extended Sets

While pre-exhaust hits you up front, extended sets burn you at the end. The same logic applies: you don’t quite have access to your usual load. Instead of giving up on a high level of stimulus, you can extend your sets. Instead of a basic set of 10 to 12 repetitions and resting, apply a drop set and continue until you’re actually fatigued. 

[Read More: Try This Shoulder and Biceps Workout to Build Muscle]

One example would be performing a normal set of Bulgarian split squats before dropping the dumbbells and continuing for another full set (to failure) without rest. Your goal is to extend the repetition count, rest very little, and modify the load as needed to safely hit failure.

How to Program Hotel Gym Workouts

Programming hotel gym workouts is focused on a few key factors. Your frequency, intensity and volume, and exercise selection are all heavily influenced by availability. Here’s what you need to know.

Frequency

The frequency of your training is always impacted by the length of your travels. Ideally, you would mimic your exact training frequency (and by extension, training split) as you have at home. 

[Read More: Use the Bent-Over Row to Make Big Gains With Big Weights]

If that’s not possible, aim for simple maintenance. Two to three sessions within the travel week will often suffice, especially if you’re bringing yourself toward muscle failure during your workouts.

Intensity

Intensity is a huge factor in seeing progress, regardless of where you’re training. While intensity is a multi-faceted concept, one useful way of thinking about it is how close to muscle (or technique) failure you come by the end of the set.

Since you likely won’t have access to heavy weights, aim for high-intensity workouts. This might mean turning to HIIT (high-intensity interval training) or using a pair of dumbbells for a full-body workout when you might otherwise adhere to another training split. Do what you need to keep your intensity (and motivation) high under less-than-ideal circumstances.

Volume

Volume (the number of hard sets you perform) is in a similar category as frequency. The amount of training you pocket into any workout should be a reflection of what your body is capable of recovering from. Depending on when your next workout is, the muscle groups required, and how sore you are, you should choose to scale your volume accordingly.

[Read More: How German Volume Training Can Add Muscle to Your Frame]

Higher volume is more appropriate when you know you’ll have limited workouts and thus more time to recover. On the other hand, if you’re going high frequency, reduce the volume per workout to keep your overall volume up.

Remember that if you’re typically tossing around very heavy weights for fewer reps, traveling might be an excellent opportunity to practice higher-volume training. 

Exercise Selection

The available equipment and your personal goals direct your decisions on exercise selection. Regardless of the equipment you have or don’t have at your disposal, you can perform squats, hinges, pull-ups, and presses. 

But the equipment in your hotel gym — whether that’s resistance bands, dumbbells, a cable machine, or maybe even kettlebells — will dictate the exact exercises you choose. You might normally prioritize bodybuilding-style exercises, or you may tend to opt for CrossFit-esque workouts. 

[Read More: 8 Push-Up Variations for Power, Strength, and Size]

Regardless, take advantage of whatever your hotel gym has to offer. It might be lighter weights or equipment you typically wouldn’t use. But take the opportunity to integrate exercises that you might normally neglect in an order that your body might not be expecting.

Hotel Hype

A surefire way to quality-check your own training is to take it on the road. Although options may seem limited, high-intensity, focused effort will keep you moving forward. The best hotel gym workouts can pack a wallop —pack in those supersets to supercharge your wellness on the road.

FAQs

Since training from the hotel might not be your norm, you may have more questions.

Featured Image: Roman Kosolapov / Shutterstock

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