You did not build the habit by accident. Do not let a week undo it.
The two kinds of people this is for
The first is the visitor. You train consistently at home, you are here for a week, and you would like to not arrive back at your gym feeling like you have started over.
The second is the second-home owner. You are in the valley a few times a year, sometimes for weeks at a stretch, and the on-again-off-again pattern is costing you more than you would like to admit.
Both are solvable. They just need different plans.
First, set the right goal
The most useful thing I can tell a visitor is this: this week is for maintenance, not progress.
You are at altitude. You are probably skiing, hiking or riding all day. You are sleeping differently, eating differently, and your body is already doing a considerable amount of work just adapting to the elevation. Stacking a hard training block on top of that is how people go home more tired than they arrived — and it is the single most common mistake I see.
Two or three quality sessions in a week keeps the habit, keeps the muscle loaded, and leaves you with energy for the reason you came. That is a win. Chasing a personal record is not.
Respect the altitude, especially on day one
Aspen is at 7,908 feet. Snowmass Village is higher. Your first workout here will feel harder than the same workout at home, and that has nothing to do with your fitness.
Give yourself a day or two before anything hard, drink considerably more water than feels necessary, and go easy on alcohol in the first days — it slows acclimatization down. The full explanation is in working out at altitude in Aspen, and it is worth ten minutes before your trip.
What a good travel week actually looks like
- Day 1: Arrive. Walk. Hydrate. Do not train.
- Day 2: Short full-body strength session, moderate loads, long rests.
- Day 3: Your mountain day — ski, hike, ride. That is the training.
- Day 4: Mobility, core, some light upper-body work. Twenty-five minutes.
- Day 5: Second strength session, or another mountain day. Not both.
- Day 6 and 7: Whatever the trip calls for, and a walk.
Three touches on the weights in a week is plenty to hold what you have built. If your room has a pair of dumbbells and some floor space, that is all this requires.
Working with what your building has
Hotel and condo gyms here vary enormously. It matters less than you would think. A full-body session built around a squat, a hinge, a push, a pull and a carry can be run with a single pair of adjustable dumbbells. The failure point is almost never the equipment — it is showing up without a plan and improvising for forty minutes.
If your building has nothing usable, the valley's recreation centers sell day passes and the private clubs sell visitor passes. I wrote a guide to the options in where to work out in Aspen and Snowmass.
In-home sessions
For most visitors the simplest answer is that I come to you. I bring the equipment and the program to your hotel, condo or house, which removes the drive and the guesswork in one move. A session that starts in your living room at 7am is a session that actually happens.
Details on the in-home personal training page.
Second-home owners: the stop-start problem
If you are here six weeks a year across four visits, the pattern usually looks like this — you train well while you are in the valley, then lose it when you go home, then spend the first days of the next trip rebuilding what you lost.
The fix is continuity, not intensity. I coach live over Zoom between visits, which means the program does not stop when you get on the plane, and your first session back in the valley starts where the last one left off rather than three steps behind it. More on that on the Zoom personal training page.
Prepare before you arrive
If there is one thing I would ask every visitor to do, it is this: start six weeks before you get here, not on the morning of day two.
Ski trips in particular reward preparation more than almost any other kind of holiday. A conditioned skier skis all day, every day of the trip, and goes home happy. An unconditioned one skis a great first day and spends the rest of the week sore. The plan is in ski season conditioning, and six weeks of ordinary work is all it takes.
Common questions
The questions I get asked most often about this, answered plainly.
Can I hire a personal trainer just for a week in Aspen?
Yes, and plenty of people do. Short engagements are common here — a few sessions during a trip, or a standing arrangement for each visit if you own a place in the valley.
Will a trainer come to my hotel, condo or house?
In-home and in-residence training is a normal part of how I work. It removes the drive, which is the most common reason a session gets skipped on a trip.
Should I train hard on a ski trip?
Usually not. Skiing all day at altitude is already a large training load. Add heavy gym sessions on top and you will spend your last two days exhausted. Maintain, do not build.
I'm at sea level now — can we start before I arrive?
Yes. I coach live over Zoom, and preparing before you travel is the highest-value thing most visitors can do. Arriving already conditioned changes the entire trip.
Structure + Consistency = Change
That formula has not changed since the day I started Aspen Pro Fitness, and it does not change at 8,000 feet. What changes is the structure — the loads, the rest, the timeline. That is the part I build for you.
I train clients in their homes, in the valley's gyms and clubs, outdoors, and live over Zoom. If you want a plan that fits the mountain you actually live on or are visiting, get in touch and we will start with a conversation about your goals.
