Between Handstands and Hotel Rooms: How This Traveling Lab Surveyor Stays Fit
Let’s face it: When it comes to staying fit on the road, creativity and flexibility are just as critical as discipline or willpower. And from what we’ve seen, no one exhibits these traits (both figuratively and literally!) more than Lauren Albrecht.
This laboratory surveyor known as @lmalbrec on Instagram has built quite a buzz. Lauren displays an unstoppable athletic ability through hybrid yoga-gymnastics moves in hotel rooms, airports, and the great outdoors. After admiring videos and photos of her (gulp!) handstands in places like Chicago Midway Airport and the icy shores of Lake Superior, we had to learn more about her daily life on the road and how she stays strong and focused no matter where she ends up.
My Work
I’m a Laboratory Surveyor for COLA. I travel around to small or larger medical laboratories to make sure their laboratory results are as accurate as they can be. This includes making sure everyone working in the lab is qualified, trained, and providing the best laboratory practice they can to their patients.
Where You’ll Find Me
My home base is Ohio/PA, but since we go into labs every two years sometimes I get to travel a lot further outside my territory. So far my favorite places to go have been Austin, Texas and Colorado.
My Workout
I focus mainly on body-weight workouts since you can’t always rely on hotel gyms. Currently I’m working through the GymnasticBodies progressions, so it’s mainly a horizontal push/pull on Monday and Thursday and then lower body/leg work on Tuesday and Friday. On the other days I like to add in some yoga or extra leg work.
I have also started running regularly again since I came close to missing a connecting flight in the Detroit airport — due to the fact that my endurance is not that great anymore!
My Goals
My current health goal is focusing on my diet and trying to cut out all industrialized seed oils (this stuff is everywhere!!) and added sugars. My main fitness goal is to be able to do a firefly press handstand.
Hotel Gym Vs. Hotel Room
I usually try to book myself a hotel room at a Hampton Inn. For the most part, they usually have great hotel gyms. I basically book my hotels by looking at the pictures of their fitness rooms before the price.
Sometimes in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin, you don’t really have any options in terms of a great gym, so the hotel room works just as fine for my workouts. Also, if it’s a nice day outside I will look at my Apple maps and see if there is a body-weight gym at any of the local parks through the pictures that come up.
My Travel Diet Hack
As mentioned before it’s really hard to avoid harmful oils while eating out or any of the prepackaged food you can buy at the store. Therefore my go-to is to always have a bag of walnuts, almonds, or pistachios on me for easy snacking. This helps when stuck in an airport for half a day, and it’s great to have on hand for long drives so you can easily skip the drive-thrus.
My Why
I want to encourage healthy habits on my travels. I enjoy finding new ways to workout, or better ways to eat and share my knowledge along the way. Plus it feels really good when you give your body the right fuel it needs and keep it moving :)
Originally published at www.roadwarriorstrong.com.
