A no-equipment hotel workout uses what every hotel already has for free — a stairwell and a parking garage — to deliver a training session that needs no gym, no dumbbells, and no drop-in fee. In this Physical Friday I share the stair and parking garage workouts I built after a Las Vegas hotel wanted $75 for gym access. Ten burpees at the bottom, run to the top, ten burpees at the top — and a handful of variations that work at any hotel in the world.
Listen now: press play in the player above and follow along.
Find the stairs or the parking garage — almost every hotel has one or both, and they are free. My go-to is ten burpees at the bottom of the stairwell, run as high as the stairs go, ten burpees at the top, and repeat for ten rounds or for a set time like twenty minutes. With stairs and a parking garage you have everything you need for a killer workout without paying a dime or depending on gym hours.
Set a twenty-minute alarm. Do ten burpees at the bottom, run the stairs to the top, do ten burpees at the top, come back down, and repeat as many times as you can until the alarm goes off. Then go back to your floor and get on with your day — workout done, probably better than what you would have gotten at home. If you know how much time you have, you can set a number of rounds instead and race the clock.
Sprint up the garage ramps to the top and take the stairs down. Add ten burpees at the top and ten at the bottom and do five rounds as fast as possible. Another favorite: five burpees, ten push-ups, fifteen squats, run to the top of the garage, run back down, and repeat five to ten times depending on the size of the garage. You are using the terrain instead of equipment.
In the deck of cards workout you shuffle a deck and assign one exercise to each suit — push-ups, sit-ups, squats, and burpees — doing the number on each card, with face cards as ten and aces as eleven. The jokers are wildcards, and on the road I set the joker as a run up the parking garage stairs. Most decks have two jokers plus a couple of extra cards, so you get about four stair runs mixed into the deck.
It is one of the best free workouts there is. At a high-rise like the Wynn or Encore in Las Vegas you have forty-plus flights right behind the exit door at the end of your hall. In summer the bottom floors are cool and the top is like a sauna, which adds its own element — bring water. Running stairs spikes the heart rate fast, hits the legs hard, and requires nothing but shoes.
Commit the night before. Survey the scene when you check in, then decide: I am going to the parking garage at 5:30, my clothes are laid out, and the workout is five burpees, ten push-ups, fifteen squats, run to the top, six rounds. Write it down. When you know exactly what you are doing before you go to bed, consistency takes care of itself.
Here are the no-equipment workouts from this episode, exactly as I do them at hotels with nothing but a stairwell and a parking garage.
I talk through pacing, timing options, and how to scale each of these in the episode, so press play in the player above.
I like staying at the Wynn and Encore in Las Vegas — beautiful gyms with everything you would want. They also wanted $75 to walk in the door. I wanted the workout but I did not need to be reliant on a gym letting me in, so I walked to the end of my hall, opened the exit door, and found forty-plus flights of stairs waiting. The first workout I invented in that stairwell is in this episode — press play in the player above.
Hotel gyms close, charge fees, break down, and get crowded. The stairs and the parking garage are free, open at 5:30 in the morning, and available at virtually every hotel on the planet. The whole point of this series is independence — building the knowledge to get a great workout no matter what the hotel offers. I explain how I survey a property on check-in and pick my spot in the episode, so press play above.
Set the clock instead of the rounds. If you have exactly twenty minutes before you need to shower for a breakfast meeting, do as many rounds as you can in twenty minutes and walk away when the alarm sounds. The workout is done, complete, finished — and nothing else that happens that day can take it away. I get into why a time cap is the traveler's best friend in the episode, so press play above.
Forty flights in a Vegas summer is its own animal — the bottom floor is air-conditioned and the top feels like a sauna, so the workout gets hotter as you get more tired. Bring water and respect the volume. The heat, the elevation, and the burpees stack into something far tougher than the treadmill downstairs. Hear how I pace it without blowing up in the episode by pressing play above.
You do not need a gym, a membership, or a single piece of equipment to stay on track when you travel. You need stairs, a parking garage, and a plan you committed to the night before.
Next time you check in, skip the fitness center tour. Open the exit door at the end of the hall, look at those stairs, and decide what time tomorrow you are going to use them. Press play in the player above and I will give you the workouts.
Physical Friday is my weekly fitness series for fishing guides, anglers, hunters, and outdoorsmen — the training, nutrition, and mindset to stay in the game for life. Watch and listen to every Physical Friday episode from Tom Rowland.
Wynn Las Vegas · Encore Las Vegas · stairwell workouts · parking garage sprints · burpees · deck of cards workout · suicide sprints · push-ups · air squats · travel fitness · hotel training
I'm Tom Rowland, a professional fishing guide based in the Florida Keys, host of the Tom Rowland Podcast, and the longtime host of the Saltwater Experience television show. Physical Friday is my weekly fitness series where I share the workouts, nutrition, and mindset that keep guides, anglers, hunters, and outdoorsmen strong, durable, and in the game for life.
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