No matter what level of fitness knowledge you think you may have, you always need to look and learn from other trainers and coaches to improve your mind and body. As the author of Dad Fitness, I still strive to learn and improve my knowledge to help others get the fastest results possible.

After spending 5 days hanging out with guys like Craig Ballantyne of Men’s Health and fitness icon Shawn Phillips, I started to pick up on some of the secrets these guys use to stay in awesome shape even while traveling.

So here are 5 Tips To Stay Fit While Traveling.

1. Workout No Matter What. After a busy 5 days of sitting on my butt in meetings and seminars I still managed to workout 4 out of the 5 days while in Florida. Which is even more than I workout at home!

The first day I got together with Rommel Acda of FitInAHurry.com, and Deb Froehlich of CelluiteCircuits.com and we trained together in the hotel gym. It wasn’t very big but had enough to get a great workout using our bodyweight and a few dumbbells.

Then the next day along with Craig Ballantyne of Turbulence Training we all headed to the local Powerhouse gym to get a great workout in a more upbeat gym atmosphere.

Wether it’s a quick hotel room bodyweight workout, a hotel gym workout or a Powerhouse gym workout, just make sure you do some exercise while traveling to offset all the sitting down on airplanes and in meetings.

2. All You Can Eat. The great thing about travelling to new cities is experiencing new places to eat. But if you’re not careful you could be paying the airlines extra weight on the way home, and I am not talking about your luggage…

So do what all the fit trainers did every morning to start their day off right; eat a nutritious breakfast. Even though our hotel served a FREE buffet breakfast every morning, most everyone who is in great shape skipped the bacon and breads and had a huge freshly prepared omelet stuffed with veggies with a little fruit on the side, me included. Keep lunch small with a salad or whole grain wrap so you don’t get sleepy during the afternoon meetings, and enjoy a nice dinner with some lean meat and veggies and even a glass of wine.

3. Drink Up. I don’t mean spend your nights at the hotel bar getting sloshed. I mean drink lots of cold refreshing water. It will keep you full and focused and your mind off the donuts and croissants sitting across the conference table.

It’s really easy to drink lots of H2O during these hotel conferences as they usually serve you pitchers of water in your meeting rooms and in the big conference rooms. Just to be sure you always have water on hand, pick up a couple of litres of spring water at the hotel gift shop and keep on ice in your room.

4. Ditch the Cab. If you are up for some sight seeing or heading to a nearby restaurant for dinner, ditch the cab fare, get some directions and walk there instead. Google Maps on your smart phone works great for this!  Walking is a great way to see a new city and burn some calories. Strolling back to the hotel after dinner is a great way to end the evening and ease the guilt from that decadent dessert.

You can also try to find a park or gym a couple miles away and walk or run there to get your heart pumping and your warmup out of the way.

5. Recharge. If you’re traveling solo, staying at a hotel is a great way to get some extra rest and relaxation. You get the bed to yourself, and you have no worries of the kids jumping in the bed at the wee hours of the morning.

It’s also a great time to catch up on some work or read that book you have been trying to get through. A dip in the hotel pool and a hot sauna afterwards might be just what you need to recharge your batteries before you get back on the road.

So there you have it, 5 Travel Tips To Stay Fit so you’re wife still recognizes you when you get home…

How do YOU stay fit on the road? Let me know and leave a comment below.

September seems to be a busy month for everyone. Back to school, back to work and back to some serious workouts!

After talking with my buddy Craig Ballantyne of Men’s Health magazine I asked him to share his 5 best tips to help you guys get more energy to get through the busy fall season and here is what he had to say.

So use those tips and have more energy….

PS.Craig Ballantyne and my buddy Chris Lopez just released a new Kettlebell Fat Loss home workout program called Kettlebell Revolution. I can’t recommend Kettlebell workouts enough if you want to get bodysculpting results in 10-20 minutes per day.

So don’t miss your chance on these powerful new home workouts – heck, you can even do them at the park.

Get your Kettlebell workouts here:

=> Kettlebell Fat Loss Workouts

There are all types of ways to do interval training, and research hasn’t shown us a best way yet. There is NO best interval training workout for fat loss, however, some of my favorites are:

a) 1 minute on, 1-2 minutes off, repeat 6 times.

b) 30 seconds on, 90 seconds off, repeat 6 times.

c) 45 seconds on, 90 seconds off, repeat 6 times.

d) 20 seconds on, 40 seconds off, repeat up to 8 times.

Make sure to include a warm-up and cool-down after each.

And remember, you can use all types of interval training methods for these workouts.

You can do treadmill running, hill walking, stationary cycling, sprinting outside (if you do extra warm-up), kettlebell swings, medicine ball power woodchoppers, rope jumping, rowing, swimming, or even the elliptical machine (if you think it works).

One research study even used 8 seconds on, 12 seconds off for a total of 20 minutes, but these short intervals are almost impossible to do on regular gym equipment.

For more in-depth, step-by-step fat burning plans, visit:

==>TurbulenceTraining.com

Sean Barker, CPT

Learn the “The Truth On Fat Loss, How To Finally Lose That Beer Belly” in this FREE report from Sean Barker at www.dadfitness.com

That’s Toronto by the way…the biggest city in Canada.

I am staying smack in the middle of downtown in the Hilton Hotel with a cool view overlooking city hall with the big Christmas tree and all the Christmas lights .

I wish my wife and daughter were here to share this with me but she is having a fun trip visiting her sister in New Brunswick. I will connecting with them on the trip home on Wednesday in Quebec City. Can’t wait to see them!

Yesterday I had an awesome day attending Day 1 of business meetings with all the top guys in the fitness industry like

Craig Ballantyne of Men’s Health & Tuburlence Training

Brad Pilon of Eat Stop Eat

Vince Delmonte of Your Six Pack Quest

Along with 6 other fitness professionals we all headed out to a nice dinner at Red’s Steakhouse. I would highly recommend it if you are ever in Toronto.

…and NO we didn’t all eat salads and chicken breasts!

We had a couple beers, appetizers, AWESOME steak and even a little dessert.

The SECRET to fat loss and getting the body you want while enjoying the foods you like to eat is this:

Do short intense workouts just 3 times a week, eat real healthy natural foods most of the time and when you feel like treating yourself go ahead and enjoy it!

…BUT the key is to get back to your healthy foods and Dad Fitness workouts the very next day.

For those of you who didn’t get to read this article in last month’s newsletter check it out in the second installment of my Dad Fitness monthly column on TheFatherLife.com

Click Here==>3 Simple Steps To Awesome Abs

Gotta go get started on Day 2 of our meetings!

Sean Barker, CPT

Learn the “The Truth On Fat Loss, How To Finally Lose That Beer Belly” in this FREE report from Sean Barker at www.dadfitness.com

…to go and visit her sister in New Brunswick for a week.

This is the first time daddy’s little girl will be away from me since she was born.

I certainly miss them both so much already. But was just talking to my wife and they arrived safe and sound which is what really matters.

As for me I will be heading out of town on Sunday to attend a weekend mastermind meeting in Toronto with Craig Ballantyne, Men’s Health expert and creator of TurbulenceTraining.com

It will be a weekend of networking with 10 other fitness professionals to enhance and grow our fitness businesses to help more people worldwide get fit for life.

No matter how much you think you know or what fitness level you may be at, always strive to learn more from the top experts in the health and fitness industry.

Don’t try and design exercise programs for yourself if you don’t have the experience and expertise to do so. Even myself as well as lots of the top trainers in the world look to other trainers in the industry to design exercise programs for them.

I also do the same every now and then and use workouts from other top trainers because they say the hardest person to design an exercise program for is YOURSELF!

Let me do the work for you and start using professionally designed fat burning workouts that are designed for busy dads.

Click this link to==>Download 16 weeks of fat burning workouts

…Tonight I will be heading to a buffet dinner with some friends.

So I thought I would share with you an awesome tip when you are attending any holiday buffets this Christmas.

It’s actually from a great book called “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think”

It’s called the Rule of Two. You can choose anything you want at the buffet, but you can never have more than two items on your plate. If you want to load it up with nuts and cake, go ahead. If you want to go back for seconds and load it up again with chips and carrots, go ahead.

Although this sounds like a recipe for disaster, it actually works quite well for people for three reasons:

• You tend to take the two types of food you want most. People who love desserts don’t work their way up to desserts. They’ll start with the desserts, and then stop.

• You tend to not overfill you plate. Putting only two things on our plate helps keep our serving sizes somewhat small because we psychologically don’t want to overload on a particular item.

• You tend to not go back more than two times. In one study did on the Rule of Two, 83 percent of people only made one or two additional returns to the buffet.

This morning I also had a great workout at the gym. It was short and intense and was a high rep day with short rest periods of 45 secs!

That’s it for today I am heading outdoors to start putting up our Christmas lights!

PS. If you feel like you ate a little too much yesterday and want to get back on track you can get your workouts instantly at DadFitness.com so you can burn off those extra calories.

…Or if you are like me and love the convenience of online shopping from the comfort of your own home the Dad Fitness System is just the thing to give to someone who is also a busy dad looking to get in shape in the New Year.

Sean Barker, CPT

Learn the “The Truth On Fat Loss, How To Finally Lose That Beer Belly” in this FREE report from Sean Barker at www.dadfitness.com

Completed Workout C of Craig Ballantyne’s TT For Meatheads at the gym today.

I felt strong on the barbell deadlifts and pumped out good reps on reverse lunges and ab supersets. The ab circuits in this program are awesome for hitting all the muscles of your core WITHOUT crunches!

Seeing as it was a beautiful sunny day here in Labrador we took Matea out for a stroll to the local playground.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Playground Lunge

Sean Barker, CPT

Learn the “The Truth On Fat Loss, How To Finally Lose That Beer Belly” in this FREE report from Sean Barker at www.dadfitness.com

Preworkout meal, Xtend amino acid/gatorade shake with oatmeal & blueberries

Started off the day yesterday with Craig Ballantyne’s TT For Meatheads Workout D

The workout started with some shoulder presses and then finished off with a crazy arm superset that gave me such an awesome pump!

It was short but INTENSE!

I’ve been through a full week of Muscle Meathead Workouts and really enjoy the short focused and intense workouts.

I had another recovery shake and then this post-workout meal.

The Dad Fitness Burger
Extra Lean Beef Burger on Whole Wheat bun with spinach, onions, tomatoes, real cheese, salsa, whole grain Dijon mustard and cantaloupe

For the rest of the day I was taking care of Matea as my wife was helping out with a friends weddings plans. We will be attending the wedding tonight, should be fun!

She just started eating cereal and she is loving it!

Here was my afternoon snack.

Mixed nuts and cheese

So for dinner I invited my mom over as my dad is gone down to the lake hunting for the weekend.

Here is what I served up, Baked Stuffed Pork Loins and a Green Salad with a healthy Cesar Dressing made from the awesome cookbook, Gourmet Nutrition.

I ended the day off with a healthy snack.

Dad Fitness Protein Pudding
Plain yogurt, 1 scoop of protein powder & blueberries

Sean Barker, CPT

Learn the “The Truth On Fat Loss, How To Finally Lose That Beer Belly” in this FREE report from Sean Barker at www.dadfitness.com

Man oh man! I certainly under estimated how intense these short, bodybuilding workouts are.

Some basic barbell squats supersetted with DB shrugs started off this intense workout.

Then it was on to more leg work and ab work. The short rest periods combined with these muscle building movements had me dripping in sweat and gasping for air!

You don’t need long boring cardio to lose fat and build muscle.

I was out of the gym in 40 mins including my warmup and stretching cooldown.

Looking forward to workout B on Monday.

Remember, building muscle is all about QUALITY not quantity;-)

Sean Barker, CPT

Learn the “The Truth On Fat Loss, How To Finally Lose That Beer Belly” in this FREE report from Sean Barker at www.dadfitness.com

It’s a pull-up/knee-up combination.

Just give it a try and let me know how your abs feel the next day!

To see more exercises like this check out Craig’s world-famous
==>Turbulence Training

Sean Barker, CPT

Learn the “The Truth On Fat Loss, How To Finally Lose That Beer Belly” in this FREE report from Sean Barker at www.dadfitness.com

Cardio exercise is such a strange thing. In theory, it should work so perfectly well for all men and women, but as anyone who has tried it knows, the practicality of it just doesn’t add up.

After all, some men and women do cardio 6 hours, 9 hours, or more per week, and still have belly fat to burn. On the other hand, it works just fine for others.

British researchers wanted to get more insight into this paradox, and studied 35 overweight men and women, who weren’t previously exercising.

(Reference: International Journal of Obesity 32: 177-184, 2008).

Subjects exercised 5 times per week for 12 weeks. That’s a lot of exercise, but it helped the subjects lose an average of 8.2 pounds, which is great – I was positively surprised by the results.

So cardio will work for some people, however, in my experience, it works best in young men, who need the help the least!

Back to the study, the variance in fat loss between individuals was huge. Check this out…

The best subject lost a staggering 32.3 pounds in 12 weeks, while the worst subject actually GAINED 3.74 pounds.

The scientists think they know where things went sour. They classified the subjects into 2 groups, called the “Compensators” and the “Non-compensators”.

The Compensators were hungrier, and as a result consumed an extra 268 calories per day, all but wiping out their cardio efforts.

Therefore, the Compensators lost the least amount of weight, and scientists believe that was due to the huge “compensatory” increase in appetite experienced by this group.

Does your appetite increase when you do slow cardio? If it does, research shows it will ruin your cardio efforts.

So if your cardio program is not working for you, check your appetite and calorie intake to see if you are “compensating” for your efforts. If you are, you might be better off using a program of high-intensity resistance and interval training (i.e. Turbulence Training) for your weight loss efforts.

As Australian Professor Steve Boucher has shown in research, interval training increases hormones called catecholamines. And increased catecholamines can reduce appetite, among other fat- burning benefits.

In the real world, few people lose 33 pounds after 12 weeks of cardio. Heck, few even achieve an average weight loss of 8 pounds with aerobic exercise.

So again, check your appetite, and consider giving high-intensity exercise a go for your next workout program.

Beat the curse of cardio with high-intensity Turbulence Training.

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training

About the Author

Learn about the “Dark Side of Cardio” in the free report from Craig Ballantyne at www.TurbulenceTraining.com Craig is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit www.TurbulenceTraining.com

Sean Barker, CPT

Learn the “The Truth On Fat Loss, How To Finally Lose That Beer Belly” in this FREE report from Sean Barker at www.dadfitness.com