By: Craig Ballantyne CSCS

You can burn fat and build muscle even if you are staying in a hotel and using a crappy hotel gym. There are no excuses. In fact, you can even do a fat burning workout in your own hotel room with bodyweight exercises.

Here's how to workout for fat loss when traveling...

I recently did a 4-day trip to Tampa Bay, where I was busy with a seminar, but still needed to do my workouts.  On Wednesday, I did dumbbell swings supersetted with pushups in a fast workout that replaced my normal Wednesday workout with kettlebells.

Any type of squatting motion will burn fat fast.  Just hold a light dumbbell or kettlebell in both hands (or in one hand), squat down, and swing the weight between your legs behind you, then stand up and use that momentum to swing the weight up to chest height.

Use extreme caution when doing this exercise.

I went down to the weight room later that week for another get lean workout.  Supersets of dumbbell chest presses (very high reps) and split squats and some other upper body stuff.

I got this hotel gym workout done in only 25 minutes.  It was another classic hotel gym set-up.  A bunch of relatively useless (and definitely inefficient) machines, along with a lot of cardio equipment, and then some light dumbbells.

Using Turbulence Training, you can workout anywhere.

So here's a general plan on how to workout when traveling, even when you are pressed for time.  Superset two exercises in the hotel gym.

Try to pick an upper body exercise and a lower body exercise (i.e. a dumbbell chest press and a forward lunge) or a pushing exercise and a pulling exercise (such as a pushup and a dumbbell row).  Do each exercise three times.  I prefer 8 reps per set.

If you are really pressed for time, you can do bodyweight only exercises in your hotel room.  A circuit of bodyweight squats, pushups, lunges and abdominal planks will use all the muscles in your body and boost your metabolism for the day.

I ended my stay with a bodyweight workout in my hotel room on the Saturday morning before my flight.  I did a Turbulence Training Bodyweight 750 repetition workout.

I used lunges, pushup variations, stickups, mountain climbers, and plenty of others as I trained for about 30 minutes and felt great afterward - I really benefit from this type of activity before going to the airport and being strapped into a seat for three hours.

Overall, three surprisingly good hotel workouts using bodyweight and dumbbell exercises only.  Goes to show you there is no excuse for letting up on your fat burning workout routine when you are on the road - even when you are really busy.

You can do supersets in the hotel gym and bodyweight exercises in your room.  Don't ever say you are too busy or don't have access to fat burning workouts... you can always do something.