How to keep up exercising while traveling

It is a long time I want to write about my training experience while traveling.
I think sharing my experience can be helpful to any full-time traveler but I would like to focus more on training while living in a van since it has some extra challenges. At least I experience those extra challenges.

What I mean by "exercising":
With exercising I mean a constant training of some discipline. It can be power weight, yoga, pilates, calisthenic, hiking, ...any kind of body training.
What makes the difference is not the discipline in itself but the intensity and the goals.
I am not talking about doing occasional sports. I'm talking about constant training with specific goals.
Taking the example of yoga: is often practiced by people living in vans because it doesn't require tools outside the body and can be done almost everywhere (also inside the van).
There is a difference between doing yoga when feeling in the mood and doing yoga to become a yoga teacher. Or even just to learn to do the split. To learn to do the split you need to constantly train your muscle and body.

What do I train for:
Since a year I decided to learn calisthenic. My first goal was to do one pull-up. Then I slowly move to more pull-ups, more push-up and so on. When I start traveling in a van, I was afraid I wouldn't have been able to keep up with the training, lose the results achieved so far and never reach the new goals.
I decided I would have put training as a priority in my new lifestyle.

The challenges

The main challenges I have encountered are:

• No routine: Routine is not always a bad thing. Routine makes it easier to plan and plans make it easier to stick to plans. If I know I'm gonna work every day till 18 and have dinner around 20, is easy to plan some days in the week where between 18 and 20 I go training.
  If every day I work and eat at different times, it is more difficult to find a stable timeframe to train.
• Often changing location: Every time I go to a new place I don't know exactly what I will find there. Will I find some gyms? Maybe They don't allow daily visitors or are all full. Will I find bars in parks? Will I find trees good enough to hang my rings?
• Shower: I must say this is my biggest challenge so far. Training without the security that I will be able to shower after it, doesn't appeal me at all. Obviously because of the smell, the cold and the uncomfortable feeling of dry sweat on my skin.
• Cold or bad weather: This is another big one. For two reasons: If I get cold or wet because of rain and I'm not sure I will manage to take a hot shower, I will probably get sick or at least it will not be fun. Second, traveling all the time means I have few clothes with me and I don't have the option to have winter and summer sports clothes. I have a one-fit-all sports outfit. Most of the time doesn't work in rain or snow or minus 0deg weather. This means training in those conditions is gonna be painful instead of being fun.
• Distraction: Is easy to get distracted when there is always something new to discover. New places, new people to meet or get to know, ...

Some of these challenges are strictly related to life in a van and in nature. In particular shower and cold.
As a digital nomad that lives in a city or in a fixed place was much easier for me to find a gym, a flat with enough space to train or a park with outdoor training facilities.

How to stay on track

The first thing that helped me is determination!
And then... Determination, determination and determination.
A song I love to listen to while I train is: Remember the Name - Fort Minor
This song says: 10% luck, 20% skills, 15% power of will, 5% pleasure and 50% pain.
Ok, maybe is not the most positive song and for me is actually 15% pain, 60% power of will and.. well, shuffle the other numbers till I got 100% ;)
I like this bit of the song because it shows that achieving goals is not a matter of luck, not a matter of being talented but mostly the power of will and yep, some hard time too.
As I said at the beginning, I set training as a priority in my lifestyle and I constantly remind myself of the goals I want to achieve, how fun it is for me to do it and how makes me feel good. Determination and motivation keep me going.

Another important factor for me was planning.
I plan as much as possible when I'm going to train. I set an average of time per week I want to train (let's say 5 days/week) then I set a minimum of time I have to do it to be ok with myself (let's say 3 days/week).
I found also very helpful to have a plan to follow and set the days of the week that I will train. Doing so, is easier for me to plan when to travel.
For example: If I decide I train on Monday and Wednesday, I try as much as possible to drive on Sunday, find a nice place where to stop that will allow me to train on Monday and then drive again on Tuesday.
I also learned that is good to have a plan to stick to but is also ok if sometimes I don't stick to the plan.
Is ok if one day I prefer to go for dinner with some new interesting person I meet is ok if one time I don't train on Wednesday and I do on Thursday instead. But is important that those changes are the exception and don't become the routine, otherwise is easy to get lost.

Have a goal for me was fundamental. Knowing that I train not just for pleasure but because I want to achieve something, keep my motivation high.
I dream about the day I will finally achieve my goals and I know that If I miss too many times the training, this will never happen. So here I am, happily sticking to my plan.

Choose the right discipline

Obviously, the discipline will make a difference on the level of difficulties in practice.
A discipline that doesn't require many tools or a particular environment fits better vanlife.
The best are any kind of training that can be done with just body weight. Those are various: yoga, pilates, calisthenics, any bodyweight exercises like push-ups or squats, many kinds of martial arts, ...
For me a great plus for calisthenics is that has little cardio activity which means doesn't make me sweat much. At the same time, the exercises are pretty thought and give incredible results.
Another plus of bodyweight training is that I can do it almost everywhere, even inside of my van in the case of really bad weather. (and yes, I did it already).

Bodyweight is really nice but to achieve some goals some extra weight or tools is required.
I need to be minimalist so what I have with me must be multi-purpose and the most efficient as possible.
My tools list are:

• rings - amazing, can do almost all the exercises with them. Cons: they take quite a lot of space, are not flexible to fit in the bag and if I don't find a place to hang them or if I cannot train outside they are useless.
• extra heavy small band - I choose to bring with me just one band therefore I choose the heaviest one. In case is too much, I can use just for a few repetitions, or I can use it not at the maximum stretch.
• big elastic bands - I have 3 elastic bands with me. Red or very light one, violet or medium to heavy and green, heavy one (for big muscle). I rarely use the green one since I can simply do the exercise with some extra weight and I rarely use the red one since is so light that I can just push myself a bit more and do the exercises without it. Therefore next time I can definitely go down to just one elastic band in my traveling bag! Yey.
• Any element I find around me to use as weight. I often use rocks or 3/5L gallon of water (which I also drink) as weight.
   

Conclusion

Is not always easy, sometimes I really want to train with weight and I don't find anything that suits it or the weather is really bad and no option to take a shower.
Then it becomes frustrating but I always remind myself to focus on the big picture and not the single case.
That I chose this lifestyle and therefore I have to be flexible and creative.
Is ok for example to do more repetitions if I don't find weights.
Or to exchange the training day with the rest day, if something else comes up.
And to remind me that I train because is really fun for me and I'm anyway getting closer and closer to my goals.