Staying Fit When You Live Out of a Suitcase

“How do you even find time for the gym?” That’s the question I get asked most.

From the outside, the nomad life looks like the thing that would make training impossible: no fixed gym, no fixed schedule, a different city every month. In practice it’s the opposite. Keeping a body I can rely on is exactly what makes the moving sustainable, and the gym is one of the few things I refuse to let travel take from me.

I didn’t always see it that way. Early on, the body was the first thing to slide. Late flights, strange food, “I’ll get back to it once I settle in,” except the settling never quite comes when your whole life is designed around not settling. What I learned the slow way is that when everything around you keeps changing, you need at least one thing that doesn’t. For me, that’s training. It’s the fixed point the rest of the week hangs off.

When your address changes constantly, your routine has to be the thing that stays still.

Why the routine matters more than the location

The mistake I made was treating fitness as a place. A gym I belonged to, a class I went to, a setup that only worked at home. Take that away and the whole habit collapses. So I stopped attaching it to a place and attached it to the week instead.

Now the rule is simple and portable: I train several times a week, wherever I am, and I decide when before the week starts, not in the moment. A hotel gym, a drop-in day pass, a bodyweight session in a small rented room, a long walk when there’s genuinely nothing else. The specific option doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s non-negotiable and it moves with me. A routine you can carry in a suitcase beats a perfect one you can only do in one city.

The discipline is the freedom

There’s a myth that the nomad life is about escaping structure. I’ve found the reverse. The freedom to work from anywhere only holds up if I bring my own structure with me, because nothing external is going to provide it. No office hours, no commute, no colleagues expecting me at a desk. If I don’t build the frame, the days blur.

Training is the most honest version of that frame. It’s the same small promise to myself, kept in a new place each time, and keeping it is what makes the rest feel like a life instead of a long, tiring trip. On the weeks I train, I work better, sleep better, and make clearer decisions. On the weeks I let it go, the freedom starts to feel like drift. The discipline isn’t the opposite of the freedom. It’s the thing holding the freedom up.

Anyone can work from anywhere for a month. Doing it for years takes a routine that travels with you.

Why Tokyo makes this easy

If you’re a nomad who wants to keep a body while you’re here, Tokyo is a gift. It’s one of the most walkable cities in the world, so movement is built into an ordinary day. There are gyms and drop-in options everywhere, from tiny neighborhood setups to 24-hour chains. Best of all, and this is a Tokyo-specific gift, most wards run their own public sports centers with gyms and pools you can use for a few hundred yen a session, no membership required, which is exactly what a light-traveling nomad wants. And then there’s the part I love most: the sento and onsen culture, a hot bath at the end of a long day that does something for the body and the head that a foam roller never will. It costs a few hundred yen and it’s on almost every corner.

Tokyo also rewards the runner, which I’d fold into any fitness routine here. If that’s your thing, our guide to running Tokyo’s parks and the Palace loop is a good place to start. Between walking, running, cheap gyms, and the bathhouses, this is a city that makes staying in shape feel less like a chore and more like part of living here.

The point isn’t the abs

I want to be clear that this isn’t about looking a certain way. It’s about not letting a mobile life quietly cost me my health, my energy, or my sense of being grounded. The body is the one thing I actually take everywhere, more reliably than any apartment or any plan. Taking care of it is how I make sure the freedom I chose stays a freedom, and doesn’t slowly turn into something I have to recover from.

You’re allowed to build a life that moves. Just make sure you pack a routine that keeps you standing while it does.