How to Train in a Hotel Gym (5 Rules, 5 Real Sessions)

Hotel training is filler training. Its job is to keep the practice intact when the conditions won't support progressive overload — not to break records, not to test anything, and not to run the program you'd run at home.

Last week in Punta Mita the resort had a genuinely good gym — squat racks, barbells, a cable machine, dumbbells into the hundreds. On the second day they closed it and moved a few pieces of kit into a carpeted, windowless boardroom. This is the framework I've used across fifteen years of training while traveling, and then the five sessions I actually ran that week, including a beach ladder with no equipment at all.

THE FIVE RULES

1. Don't plan anything until you're standing in the room. The warm-up is reconnaissance — the inventory takes ninety seconds.

2. Never plan on going hard. Plan on showing up, then let the room and the body vote.

3. Three days max in a typical hotel gym. Then find a local gym or get outside.

4. Keep a short list of structures in your head so the only thing you invent on the spot is the movement and the time domain.

5. Constraint is a creative tool, not a restriction. Fewer options force better workarounds.

THE STRUCTURES

Ladders · Intervals · EMOM · AMRAPs · Complexes · Chippers · Rounds for time with a cardio anchor

THE SESSIONS

1. Landing session — 10-20-30-40-50: row cals, run cals, lunges, air squats. ~32 min.