I wanted to know the basic work-out routine that I should do with no equipment in a hotel room, so I read twenty of the top Google results for “hotel work-out” and “no equipment work-out”.
I put all the exercises these websites listed into a spreadsheet and then I checked a box if that site included that exercise. I wasn’t too precise: a lot of the websites had non-canonical exercises – you’re doing a push-up and then it turns into a lunge or a handstand or whatever. I omitted all that stuff because I just want a very basic list that says “push-ups”, “squats”, etc.
Push-ups seem to be the real deal according to these websites. Eighteen of the twenty sites I looked at included push-ups as one of the exercises (although, as I say, some of these were push-ups with some kind of twist). There were also pretty credible-looking sites saying that you can be basically fit and healthy doing only push-ups.
After push-ups with 18 votes, the next high consensus items were:
- Squats (15 of 20)
- Lunges (14 of 20)
- Plank (9 of 20)
- Burpees (8 of 20)
- Dips, hip raises, jumping jacks, and mountain climbers (all with 6 of 20)
For myself, I’ve made my routine just push-ups, squats, lunges and plank. That’s driven partly by a desire for simplicity and partly by I don’t really like doing burpees.
Here is the result in pdf form: