No-Equipment, On-The-Road Workouts

"How to work out at home or while on the road" is a popular question. For some people, extended vacations (i.e. the backpacking student) or business trips can interrupt training, workouts, and fat loss, and may even set you back from the progress you have made in your weight loss program. Whether it's cardio or weight training withdrawal, there are ways you can still get a workout on the road.

There are many ways to exercise without equipment. There are several ways around these problems, so here are some ideas, now it is up to you to choose the method that best suits your goals and facilities.

Upper-Body Bodyweight Training: At home or on the road without equipment.

Bodyweight training is, simply put, not the most effective way to train for gains in strength, muscle mass, or decreases in body fat. However, if your goal is to improve muscle endurance (i.e. for a police recruitment fitness test), then using your bodyweight is a great way to train at home.

For your upper body, push-ups, pull-ups, and crunches are the obvious exercises that come to mind. Simple modifications of these exercises will add mental variety, a new training stimulus, and greater effectiveness to your home workout. While it is unlikely that you would want to work out at home forever, you may be able to get a lot of mileage out of bodyweight exercises that are listed below.

In addition, there are many websites that have more bodyweight exercises.

Push-up

The push-up mimics the bench press and trains the chest, shoulders, triceps, serratus anterior, and even the latissimus dorsi ("lats"). If it has been a long time since you did 100-200 push-ups in a workout, your upper body should be sore tomorrow, even if you can bench press twice your bodyweight.

The Traditional

Place your hands on the ground shoulder-width apart (or slightly wider). Keep your feet together and maintain a neutral spinal alignment (with your head, neck, and back straight). Slowly lower yourself to the floor by bending the elbows. Allow your chest to touch the floor and then push up to return to starting position.

Variations: The closer you keep your hands together, the more you will train your triceps. As you spread your hands out, the movement will stress the chest muscles more, but may also result in a greater stress and pain at the wrist joint (if you spread your hands extremely wide).

Jackknife push-up

This push-up places a greater emphasis on the shoulder muscles (deltoids). Place your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart and keep your feet flat on the floor. Elevate your hips so that the body forms a V-shape. Lower your upper body until the shoulders are even with the elbows and your upper arms are parallel to the floor. Push up to return to the starting position.

Variations: You can increase the stress on the deltoids and triceps by taking weight off of your feet and transferring it to your hands. You can do this by elevating your feet. The higher you elevate them, the more stress on these muscles, and the less stress on the pectorals.

Push-Ups With A Plus

This exercise is provided by Lori Gross, CSCS, of Human Performance Specialists, Inc. This is an excellent rehabilitation exercise.

Perform a normal push-up. At the top of the movement, push up maximally, rounding the shoulders and abducting the scapulae. For beginners, this exercise can be done while standing and pushing-up against a wall.

One-arm Elevated Push-ups

This is a twist on the traditional push-up and stresses the serratus anterior muscle. This muscle is located on either side of the body, adjacent to the abdominal area, just below the chest and the lats, and wrap around the rib cage like large fingers.

To stress the right serratus anterior muscle, place the right hand elevated on a 6-10 inch block rather than on the floor. The left hand is placed normally on the floor and hands are slightly greater than shoulder-width apart. Perform normal push-ups but try to push the most through the right arm and use the left side only to stabilize the body. Perform 10 repetitions in this manner and then switch to the left arm.

Pull-ups & Chin-ups

These are difficult and demanding exercises even for people that have been training for a long period of time. In fact, you may not be able to perform a single repetition if you are at the beginner stage. Thus, you will need to modify your technique to address this weakness.

Many coaches recommend performing only the "eccentric" phase of a pull-up or chin-up if you are currently too weak to do a full repetition. For this, you will need a chair to boost yourself to the top position, where you will start. Now, slowly lower yourself for up to 10 seconds. From the bottom position, boost yourself to the top position again and then slowly lower yourself again. Be conservative here. If you have trained very little, limit yourself to 1-3 repetitions per set, and perform only 2-3 sets in your first workout. Learn to control your body.

If you are a little more advanced and can do a couple repetitions in the pull-up, you can change your grip to get more repetitions. By definition, a pull-up grip is wider than shoulder width, with palms turned down. A chin-up grip is shoulder-width, with palms turned up. The chin-up exercise is easier, and the movement requires more help from the biceps.

Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Mens Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit http://www.TurbulenceTraining.com