Survival Strength – Three Essential Exercises for Life on the Go

The core mindset

After more than 40 years in business, one of my clients realized that time is life’s ultimate scarcity. 

But no matter how busy your schedule is, I always recommend making time to exercise. Even on days when your calendar is full of meetings or you’re flying halfway across the globe for a two-day trip, it’s still possible and even vital to take a few minutes to move. When waking up at 4:30 a.m. and returning home at 11 p.m., getting to the gym may be unrealistic, but that doesn’t mean you can’t exercise.

Look for “lost time” throughout your day — waiting for a taxi, to board a flight, at the train station or even while on hold if you spend a lot of the business day on the phone. These unexpected windows are perfect opportunities to fit in quick “survival strength” exercises that help you maintain your health and fitness, wherever your work takes you. 

Lunges or step-ups

Last autumn in Tokyo, on a normal day for me, jumping between airports, train stations and my lunch and dinner meetings, I climbed over 300 stairs. I didn’t go out of my way to find extra stairs — just made the choice to take them whenever possible and watched the results. This is something any busy executive or entrepreneur can replicate in a city like Tokyo with major transit hubs. 

Lunges (or step-ups, depending on your perspective) are a hidden gem: nobody bats an eye if you walk up two stairs at a time at the train station. That removes the awkwardness some people feel about doing “obvious exercise” in public. They are also easy to integrate into your day with zero extra effort, thanks to the endless transport hubs you’ll encounter. 

Whenever you take two or three steps at once, because of the amount of leg movement required, you’re performing a lunging motion. During a busy day, you can easily add 100 stairs to your routine just by choosing stairs at train stations, airports and hotels. With a little conscious thought, you’ll engage your entire lower body, plus your heart and lungs, as you lunge your way up.

The prayer press

Put your hands together in a “prayer” position and push as hard as you can. Like all of these exercises, it’s more important that you actually do this exercise than worry about perfect form. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can adjust the height of your hands on your torso to target different muscles. This move works your chest, shoulders and some of those deeper stabilizers. These muscles are built for power, so you’ll usually feel them fatigue quickly — which is great for your schedule, since you won’t need to hold the prayer press for more than 60 seconds. 

One key tip: give it your all. It’s easy to go through the motions and miss out on the benefits, so push your hands together firmly. You can sneak this exercise into your daily routine — standing, sitting or any other morsel of free time. If you manage to do this five or more times a day with true maximum effort, expect some muscle soreness tomorrow. That’s success for you, your schedule and your next training session, knowing you haven’t missed a beat. The perfect form is demonstrated in this video:

Scapular retraction

Modern professionals spend too much time seated, pulled forward by our devices. Constant engagement with technology has made it harder for most of us to consciously activate the mid-back muscles that keep us upright. Even regular gym-goers often neglect these invisible but essential postural muscles in favor of the more visible muscles. 

For this exercise, simply stand tall and pull your shoulder blades together behind your back. Imagine pinching a finger between your shoulder blades. If you struggle with this, you’re not alone. Try sitting down, gripping your seat cushion and attempting to pull your arms behind you. Keep practicing consistently, it will be difficult and tortuous at first, but you’ll improve. See the ideal technique in this video:

Conclusion

As part of this article I’ve provided two exercise walk-through videos, with tips I usually reserve for clients who train with me. If you found these valuable, or if this article inspired you to become an “exercise survivalist” when your schedule is chaotic, please reach out to let me know.

About the writer 

Mike Slomczewski, MSc, PT, CSCS is a physiotherapist, strength and conditioning specialist and the owner of Summit Performance. He serves executives, business owners, busy professionals and unique solo athletes with full-service travel health and fitness services.

You can book a Discovery Call with Mike here: www.summit.fit/discovery-call 

Learn more about Summit Performance: www.summit.fit