Holiday Gains: How To Use Your Luggage To Stay Fit While You Travel

With all of the fun and festivities of the holidays comes certain seasonal stresses that are hard to ignore.

Traveling to be with family involves, well, travel. And though air travel is close to the levels it was at in 2019 before the pandemic, there are certainly a host of new wrinkles that can make it as unpleasant as it ever was (along with all of the fun details you remember, like playing Elbow Jockey over who gets the middle arm rest).

Being with family still involves, well, family. If you’ve spent a year or even two away for health and safety reasons, there’s nothing quite like the joy of that first day by their sides again. That second day, though, might just remind you of all the little things that make you appreciate your own space.

And doing those once-a-year events means, well, leaving the consistency of the rest of your year. For dieters, that means the added challenge of navigating holiday meals while sticking to their plan. For freelancers, it might mean carving out space in your parent’s basement to finish a last-minute client request. And for weight lifters, it might mean improvising a home gym in your childhood home.

Given that working out might be the key to keeping your sanity this holiday, we rounded up a few great collections of suitcase workouts - and the suitcases they work best with - to help you stay in shape.

Staying Suitcase Strong Through The Holiday Season

Though there are plenty of workouts you can do with your luggage, so we’ll break them down into the type of bag you might be traveling with for simplicity’s sake.

1. Any Type of Suitcase - Get your heart rate pumping with Muscle & Fitness’s Burpee Jump Overs, the perfect kind of full-body exercise that’ll keep you from cutting corners.
   
   
2. Works Best With A Duffel - Shape.com has a nice list of exercises, including this Clean to Press, which includes bringing your luggage up from the floor, flipping onto your forearms, then pressing it up. In case your arms get wobbly in those late stages, you’ll want to protect your floors from falling suitcases, so avoid hardshell ones for safety!
   
   
3. Hardshell Suitcase - Adding pushups to your holiday suitcase routine is a great way to add variety and difficulty. If you’re going to be doing either incline or decline pushups using the luggage like this Ignore Limits workout, a hardshell bag is going to provide a steady surface that makes your life a lot easier.
   

And while we believe fitness is its own reward, why not treat yourself to a little something for sticking to your workout plans this year? You can grab our IRLA Strength Training Pack here!

Besides lugging your luggage up and down stairs, let us know below if you’ve got any holiday hacks for keeping your workouts going strong!