Sometimes your travels will take you to places that don’t have an indoor exercise facility. This is no reason to miss out on a good workout.

Sometimes it’s actually more fun to exercise outdoors. Imagine doing a workout on the beach while on Koh Samui or hiking in the Canadian Rockies. There are heaps of things that you can do outdoors to stay fit.

Here are three workouts that don’t require any equipment and can be completed just about anywhere outdoors:

Workout 1

• Run 1.2km. Record your time. Rest for 3 minutes.
• Complete 50 squats. Record your time. Rest for 1 minute.
• Run 800m. Record your time. Rest for 3 minutes.
• Complete 50 push-ups. Record your time. Rest for 1 minute.
• Run 400m. Record your time.

Your aim in this workout is to maintain a high output in the ‘go’ phases and recover as quickly as possible in the rest phases. You can modify the intensity of the workout based upon your condition on the day. Different levels of effort will provide a very different response.

Workout 2

“Angie”

For time:

• 100 pull-ups
• 100 push-ups
• 100 sit-ups
• 100 squats

This is one of the original benchmark CrossFit workouts. It’s very tough.
It actually does require equipment in the way of a pull-up bar. So, you could try this one in a playground or wherever you can hang off something and perform a pull-up.

Here are a few ways to scale the workout to something that may be more suitable to you:

1. Reduce the reps by 25%, 50% or 75% percent
2. Replace the pull-ups with supine rows
3. Complete the push-up from the knees

Workout 3

Five rounds (for time) of:

• 25 burpees
• Run 2x 50m shuttle

Make your own

You can create your own workouts with little effort by selecting a few exercises from the following pool:

• Pull-ups
• Push-ups
• Burpees
• Sit-ups
• Leg raises
• Get-ups
• Mountain climbers
• Supermans
• Squat jumps
• Lunges

Once you’ve selected your movements you can fit them into one of the following formats:

• Five rounds of 20 movements each (pick three movements)
• As many rounds as possible in 12 minutes (15 reps each for three movements)
• Three rounds of: a run (up to 400m) plus 25 reps of two movements

This is by no means a definitive list. There are few rules when building workouts. Some common sense does play a part though.

Photo by John Nyberg.

You may enjoy these related items:

• 39 quick tips to help you stay fit while travelling
• Three low cost tools for your portable fitness kit
• Five more workouts for travellers (from CrossFit Victoria)
• Improve your running technique with these drills
• Five ways to pass the time when you’re stuck in an airport