Transcript: Your Fitness Doesn't Have to Take a Vacation When You Do
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Ashley introduces the episode and explains she's heading on a road trip to Florida, setting up her goal of staying on track with fitness while traveling.
Maybe the truth is you just need a plan. What's up you guys? Famous Ashley Grant here. Welcome to More Movement Please, the podcast where I hope to inspire you to move your body more. Today I want to talk about traveling. So... I am going to be doing a road trip down to Florida and by the time you're hearing this I could probably already be on my trip. I think I've told you guys in the past that I batch these and I sometimes will record days in advance to make sure that I always have content that can drip out even whenever I'm not available which is like now when I'm on my trip. So I am taking a road trip to Florida and I just kind of wanted to share with you guys what my plan is to stay on track with my fitness goals while I am out of town.
Ashley describes her plan to use saved YouTube workout playlists, bodyweight exercises, and a resistance band since she won't have gym access, including a stretch routine she and her husband do daily.
So the first thing that I'm going to be doing is I have set up a playlist of all of the exercises that I can do anywhere with Wi -Fi. And as long as I can connect either to Wi -Fi or at least have some sort of a cell signal, I can access my YouTube videos that I have saved in my playlist so that I can keep working out even while I'm gone. And I will be doing a lot of body weight workouts because I won't have access to dumbbells.
I will have a fitness band with me, a resistance band, but I won't have dumbbells. like I normally would at the gym. So I have a lot of body weight exercises planned and I have a lot of cardio planned as well. I also will be doing my daily stretches. I have gotten really addicted to doing stretch classes. Those are some of my favorite things to do. And my husband and I have kind of gotten pretty addicted to doing them every single day. We can tell when we skip one because our bodies are just more tight on the days that we don't do them. So if you're not stretching, that's at least one thing that I highly recommend that you start doing because stretching is such...
a big thing like it is it's so good for mobility and it just it gets the blood pumping it makes the body move better it just feels so good to be stretching so if you're going to do anything that involves movement at least at the very least try doing some stretching and walking um i think it's like 150 minutes of cardio you're supposed to be doing each each week to be as quote unquote healthy so if you could do you know stretching and then 150 minutes of walking every week i I recommend you start like just just start. There's there's some really awesome stretch videos. Some of them are only 10 minutes long on YouTube and like it gets a full body stretch. There's some that you can do that are standing stretches.
There are some that are sitting stretch classes and then there's even ones where you're on the floor. But I personally prefer to do the standing stretches. I don't know about you, but I sometimes whenever I have to. get down on the floor, I have a little bit of a hard time getting back up. I have issues with my knee, my left knee. I've had trouble with my left knee for as long as I can remember. And sometimes it really just gets irritated. And so every video that I do for stretching is always standing stretches.
They just, it's better for me. But if you prefer doing seated stretches or sitting stretches, there are all kinds of different stretch classes that you can find on YouTube. What I recommend you do is go through YouTube and like search different things and see what feels best to you. Like, for example, if you want to do the 150 minutes of walking each day, but you don't have a really good place that you can go walking, there are some amazing walk in place videos that you can find online. Even if you have just five square feet in your living room, like I highly recommend that you do something to to get a good workout in. Like it's it's pretty amazing how many. exercise videos there are online, different YouTubers that have created some really incredible fitness content that you can use even if you can't get to a gym. I remember whenever Snowmageddon was hitting us here in Kentucky, I couldn't get
to the gym for, I think it was 11 days, and I still found some really incredible workouts that I was able to do so that I could keep doing all the things that I love to do. Like I said, I didn't really have access to the dumbbells that I usually use at... at the gym, but I still got a good enough workout in. I got my heart pumping. I got, you know, the strength training in that I possibly could. And so, yeah, while I'm on my trip, I will definitely be leveraging YouTube in a big way. Pretty much everywhere we're going is either going to have a cell signal or access to Wi -Fi, so I should be able to use those videos.
And then I also found some pretty awesome lists of different exercises that I can do that require just your body weight. Some of them are plank exercises. Some are push -ups. There's wall sit things that I found. I mean, I found all kinds of awesome lists of exercises that I can do. So basically, I'm going to, it might sound silly to you, but one of the things that I have planned on doing is something that I actually used to do whenever I went to this boot camp in Florida.
Ashley shares a card-based workout method she learned at a Florida boot camp, where each card corresponds to an exercise or rep count, which she plans to bring on the trip to keep things varied and fun.
I was doing this boot camp for several weeks down in Florida. And what we did is we had a deck of cards and on each card there was a different exercise. And so at the beginning of each class, the trainer would pick out like 11 or 12 cards that had these different exercises. And then she'd pick a few more that would say how many reps we had to do of each of these exercises. So like if she pulled out jumping jacks and then pulled out, you know, a three, then we had to do three jumping jacks. Or if she pulled out plank and she pulled out. a 10, we had to do, you know, 10 sets of planks for 10 seconds each, that kind of thing. So that's just kind of a way to add some fun to it and also make sure that I'm not bored with how I'm working out while I'm gone. So that's my plan is to just bring a deck of cards that says all the body weight exercises that I can do. And if my instructor from the YMCA does in fact send me a list of
exercises that I can do, I'll probably leverage those as well. But Basically, I'm just making plans to have like backup plans so that no matter what, while I'm gone, I can keep moving. Because the biggest thing for me is that while I'm gone, I don't want to lose momentum. Like that is my my biggest thing is that I want to make sure that no matter what happens on this trip, I am still moving every single day. I may not be doing, you know, two hours the way that I normally would, but we do have a lot of walking plans. So I think I'm still going to get about two hours a day of working out anyway, which is what I'm hoping for. I just I've become so addicted to movement that I don't want to go back to sedentary lifestyle.
So I'm hopeful that, you know, if we play our cards right, that I'll get at least two hours of movement in every single day. That is my goal. Like while we're driving down. We've already talked about, my husband and I have already talked about all the stops that we'll make so that we can make sure that we get in, you know, 10 to 20 minutes of... of exercise during the whole trip so that we don't get tight. We're already planning like stretches throughout the day, just making sure that we get as much movement in as possible, because even though we do have about 14 hours of driving ahead of us, we want to make sure that during that driving, we're moving our bodies as much as possible. And so I'm really excited about that. And then the other thing that I have been asked about a lot is like nutrition wise, what are we going to do about the fact that we're going to be out of town? Are you going
Ashley and her husband have planned stops every 10-20 minutes during their 14-hour drive to stretch and move so they don't get stiff on the road.
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Ashley talks through their nutrition approach: cooking in hotel rooms with microwave-friendly foods, packing fruit cups and tuna packs, splitting restaurant meals, and staying mindful without subscribing to diet culture.
to be eating out a lot? And the truth is, yeah, we probably will. We, you know, we did go to the store yesterday and we got a lot of food that we can make on the road. That was one of the big things that we did on our 2016 road trip. We took a road trip from Florida to California and back. And during that trip, we didn't eat out. I think. Hardly at all. I mean, I remember maybe four or five times that we ate out while we were on that trip and we were gone for three and a half weeks. But the rest of it, we were actually cooking in our hotel rooms. So what we did is we we got a bunch of different things that we could make in the microwave. And it's pretty impressive whenever you start really thinking about like. things from a new perspective of how you can cook even while you're on the road.
And while we were limited, we still tried to make sure that we weren't going over budget. We weren't spending too much money and we weren't, you know, eating a bunch of crap. And so that's the plan for this trip as well, is we intend to fix a lot of our meals in our hotel rooms. We have planned simple meals like, you know, making sure we're trying to get veggies in, getting protein in and things like that. And again, I want to reiterate, you know, I've told you guys before, we don't subscribe to dieting. We don't subscribe to diet culture at all. But we are still trying to be mindful of the choices that we're making. We're not just going to go and just eat a bunch of fatty foods. And, you know, because unfortunately, that's one big thing about road trips is it's very easy to just reach for crap and eat a bunch of junk. You know, we know that whenever we do that, we feel like crap.
And I mean, it just makes sense, right? You eat crap, you feel like crap. And so we have already planned, you know, we're bringing fruit cups and not the ones with syrup or, you know, we're trying to get the sugar free options and things like that. So we're bringing fruit cups. We're bringing, you know, granola bars and. We brought the little tuna packs that you can have tuna salad on the road, like that kind of thing. And so we're making very mindful decisions about the things that we're going to be consuming.
And, you know, though we will be eating out probably more on this trip than we normally would, we're being mindful of our decisions. Like one of the things that my husband and I have always done that I really love is when we go out to eat, we try to split a meal. Because if you're really honest, most of the time when you go out to eat, the portions are way too big. And we're a lot more conscious of when we consume a meal, when we get to that point where we feel full. And so we are very good about splitting meals. And that really helps us. It helps us in making sure we're not overeating. And so that's a big thing that's important to us. And so we will definitely be doing splitting meals everywhere we go with the exception of a couple of days that we know that it'll be individual meals. But I'll tell you guys all about that as we get going. If you want, I'll give you guys a... I guess a debrief
of what we experienced on the trip, because I want to I want to keep it real. Right. I want to tell you guys exactly what's going on. And I think, you know, if you have any travel coming up this summer, maybe it'll help you to to figure out how you can come up with mindful decisions that can keep you on track even while you're out of town. So so those are the two big things that we're going to be doing to keep on track with my fitness goals is making sure that we're still working out every day. And, you know. doing all the exercises that we possibly can. I think bodyweight exercises is going to be the most helpful so that I can keep my strength training up. I've really loved the fact that I'm lifting heavier weights. And who knows, maybe I'll do so many bodyweight exercises that by the time I get back to the gym, the 20s will be nothing to me. That's a good goal, right? I don't know when we're going to be back. I'll be honest with
Ashley mentions upcoming trips to Nashville, Knoxville, and Indianapolis, explains she's been walking more now to prepare her body, and closes by encouraging listeners to plan movement even around a packed schedule.
you guys. We don't have a return date in mind. It's simply because I work from home, like my husband and I can work from the road. And so, you know, we're we're just going to fly by the seat of our pants and see where the days take us. And in all likelihood, we're only going to be gone a week. But there is a very there's a possibility that we could be gone longer. And I do have other trips coming up in the summer. I will be going to. Nashville and Knoxville and Pigeon Forge. And I also have a trip planned to Indianapolis and all the things. And so I have a lot of walking that is planned for the summer. And so I'm doing a lot more walking right now to prepare my body for all the walking that I will be doing on all my trips. So that's been really good. And of course, my dogs are loving it because they're getting more walks than they've ever gotten. And so it's it. It's really been good just, you know, preparing my body to go
on these trips. And I'm more excited because of the fact that I am actively trying to make sure that I'm ready to handle what's ahead of me. And so I hope this inspires you. I hope this helps someone. If you, too, are going on a trip or have any travel planned or even if you're just trying to figure out stuff that you can do, you know, on the go or during the day, I hope this inspires you to start, like, planning things a little bit, you know, just. Just because you have a packed schedule doesn't mean you can't do something to get movement in. And so that's been the message from the very beginning is to have more movement, please. And I hope this helps someone. So that's all I've got for you guys today. Onwards and upwards, my friends. Have you worked out today?