Not Ready To Return To The Gym? Try These Virtual Hotel Workouts

Whether you’re still sheltering in place or are squeamish about returning to a germ-laden gym, hotels are bringing workouts to you at home.

Forbes Travel Guide found properties from Mauritius to Mexico that have adapted their exercise regimens to help you keep healthy during the quarantine. Choose from a routine designed by a celebrity trainer or one that you can do in your desk chair. Either way, you’ll work up a sweat.

Yearn for Yoga

Even if you can’t stick the full cobra pose under the rustling leaves on The American Club’s outdoor yoga platform (which debuted in July 2019), the Kohler, Wisconsin, hotel provides a quarantine-friendly substitute. Visit this YouTube channel for videos of its Yoga on the Lake studio. Try vinyasa, core focus, gentle yoga and more with the virtual classes.

Stretch Out

After a marathon Netflix binge, shake the sedentary out with The Capitol Hotel Tokyu’s five-minute stretching session. Set against the backdrop of the Tokyo hotel’s beautiful indoor pool, personal trainers from the fitness club lead you through an easy but effective full-body stretch to loosen your limbs. 

Chair Calisthenics

If you’re working from home and glued to the chair, The Capitol Hotel Tokyu offers a way to get in some exercise. One of the personal trainers from its two-story fitness club shows you how to do a mini workout without leaving your desk chair. The routine even works your abs. Go through the reps on your next conference call.

Workout Warrior

“Being in quarantine and being at your home doesn’t mean that you are going to skip leg day,” chastises Alejandro Toledo in one of his workouts on Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita, Mexico’s IGTV feed. The strict personal trainer’s routines use your own body weight (when he does use weights, he suggests modifications), which makes them accessible if you’re at home or in a hotel room. And if you wince at the thought of doing planks with hip dips or the dreaded burpees, don’t think of backing out. Toledo says, “Excuses are for the weak.”

HIIT the Gym

Feel the burn as Burwing Caetan, manager of One&Only Le Saint Géran’s Club One fitness and adventure hub, demonstrates some HIIT (high-intensity interval training) moves, including the twisted mountain climber (which engages abs, obliques, glutes, hips and legs) and bicycle crunch (which works the core and lower body). When it burns too much, the Mauritius resort’s bright green palms and azure waters showcased in the video will push you to get your body ready for the beach.

Circuit Training

To pack more moves into your workout, opt for One&Only Le Saint Géran’s circuit of five different exercises, including reverse lunges and squat jumps. (See the video here.)

Meditate More

While Amrit Ocean Resort & Residences doesn’t debut in Florida’s Singer Island until fall 2020, the wellness hotel is already serving guests. It Facebook page is teeming with tips (like citrus scents can lower anxiety), but tune in for the live virtual wellness events, like a guided meditation with Somya Ramrakhyani, a pediatrician and 17-year mindfulness and mediation instructor, that will help you decompress.

A Model Workout

London-based fitness coach Artur Zolkiewicz trains models and celebrities and he can share pointers in your living room via Nizuc Resort & Spa’s YouTube channel. As part of his virtual wellness residency at the Cancun hotel, his strengthening workouts target different parts of the body. While you’re on Nizuc’s YouTube, finish your sweat session with breathwork guided by Artur Paulins.

Morning and Nighttime Routines

Equinox Hotel Hudson Yards was envisioned as a fitness-forward hotel, where a stay revolves around wellness. If you can’t check in just yet (Equinox reopens July 1), the New York City hotel lets you sample the offerings, namely its AM and PM rituals. The former helps you transition from curled-up sleeping to awake and alert, while the latter assists in alleviating tension and prepping you for bed.