Staying Fit on the Road: 6 Trucker Workout Tips

Staying fit isn’t easy for anyone, but sometimes it can feel almost impossible for a professional truck driver.

However, all is not lost! While there is no perfect one-size-fits-all solution to maintaining truck driver health, here are six easy fitness tips for truckers to help maintain their overall health.

1. Staying Fit  With Exercise in the Morning

Trucking is hard work, and every trucker knows how hard it is to get in a workout after a long day on the road. Exercising in the morning not only has immediate driver health benefits, such as increased energy, but it also helps drivers wake up and boosts their BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate), helping them to burn even more calories throughout the day.

2. Keep Stretching While Driving

Fitness can be maintained while trucking even when in the driver’s seat. Ankles, wrists, necks, and shoulders can and should be rotated and stretched. Sitting for too long without moving is terrible for the body, and even simple movements can boost blood flow and help prevent hypertension.

3. Staying Fit will Exercise Your Eyes and Mind

No trucker workout tip list would be complete without a reminder that overall driver health is about more than just muscle tone. Trucking involves the mind and eyes, and truck driver health depends on them too. Regularly changing visual focus points and playing simple mental games can help truckers stay alert and fit.

4. Compound Exercises Are Both Simple and Effective

Even without a gym, body weight is all you need. Squats, walking, lunges, and push-ups are great movements for building and maintaining muscle tone and are perfect for on-the-go trucker fitness because they require no additional equipment. Best of all, they are compound movements, which means that they involve multiple major muscles groups. Compound movements are great for maintaining and building functional strength.

5. Exercise Throughout the Day

Truckers trying to maintain their fitness don’t have the luxury of taking a full hour to workout at one time. Doing a quick set of squats and walking lunges along the length of their truck trailer during breaks is a great way to get the most out of a rest stop. Not only is it good exercise, but stretching muscles and increasing blood flow is key to both staying alert on the road and reducing the risk of hypertension and other problems that can be caused by sitting too long.

6. Set Reasonable Goals

No trucker would set out to drive from Florida to California non-stop. Not only would it be a violation of driving regulations, but also it would be unrealistic. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is a fit, healthy body. Many people abandon their fitness programs because they expect to see instant results, but try to remember that fitness is a long series of choices. Truckers should take satisfaction in simply making those choices to be healthy, rather than seeking satisfaction in how their bodies look. If the right choices are made consistently, a healthy body will eventually follow.