Best Exercises For Travel Days – BowlFit Tips

As a bowler we all have spend long days traveling to tournaments in a car or sitting on a plane. Those long days when you get to a hotel room you may be too exhausted and jet lagged to actually workout but your body will take a toll from all that sitting if you don’t do something about it. So I’ve narrowed it down to 3 movements or exercises you can do to help on those long travel days but won’t be incredibly exhausting.

1. Hip Lifts
You can do them with just your body weight; simply lie on the floor and plant your feet on the ground while extending your hips up towards the ceiling. When we sit, our hip flexors are shortened and become tight while your hip extensors become overstretched and need activation. Hip lifts will do just that.

2. Rows
While spending a significant time sitting your shoulders will have a tendency to round forward causing aches and pains in your upper back because your rhomboids are being overstretched. Therefore after a long day of travel, it will be beneficial do body weight rows or dumbbell/kettlebell rows to get the muscles of your mid-back activated and allow your shoulders to roll back.

3. Bridges or Cobras
Think about the position of your back when sitting on a plane or in a car. Usually your back is rounded out which stretches out the erector muscles along your spine. To shorten those back up and allow the abdominal muscles to stretch back out, I recommend doing some bridges. If you can do a full wheel bridge that is great, but not all will have that mobility in the spine right away. In that case, you can start with an upward dog yoga pose or “cobra” position in which you lie on your stomach and slowly lift your chest off the ground.

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About Heather –

Heather D’Errico MS, CSCS, CFSC, LMT

Heather began BowlFit in 2013 with the hope to provide awareness to bowlers about how crucial training off the lanes truly is. She has been an avid bowler her entire life competing as a collegiate bowler for Robert Morris University, assistant coaching at the University of Central Missouri, and now head coaches at Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, NY.

She obtained a master’s degree in kinesiology with an emphasis on exercise science and interned with the head strength coach at UCM. She became a certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS) through NSCA shortly after graduation and began coaching athletes at Next Level Strength and Conditioning in Fairport, NY.

In October 2015 she received her certified functional strength coach certification and then went back to school in July 2016 for massage therapy. She is now a licensed massage therapist and runs a business called Restorative Bodywork in Rochester, NY that specializes in movement therapy and sports massage.

Heather has also been competing on the PWBA tour the last 3 seasons and continues to use her experiences as a competitive and professional bowler to create programs for bowlers. She enjoys the challenges of making programs specific to each bowler as every person needs to focus on different areas for their performance goals. With that said her training motto is “do no harm” and believes each program should most importantly make a bowler FEEL better and play with minimal injuries/pain.