Maintaining Fitness On-Board

How to keep fit while Cruising

We are often asked how we manage to keep fit on board while we are journeying so much.

This is a good question, however we find that generally being on board keeps you pretty fit. For one, we're on a constantly moving object so our muscles are always working. We are also fairly outdoorsy people, also there is plenty of space on board for a few trick exercises.

I tend to fall in and out of routines – variety suits me. Following are a few things I do...

SuP - Stand up paddle board

We just invested in one and we love it! Purely balancing seems to work most muscles I have. My goal is to pull off a yoga routine on this mamma.

At the moment I am providing a lot of humour for Darren – which is also great. They say lots of deep bellied laughter is also a workout right?!

TRX Fitness Bands

I love these! A durable set of two adjustable bands that you can hook onto your mast, a tree or over a door – and then do resistance exercises with.

You use your own body weight to pull against whilst going through your routine, which can involve squats, sit-ups, push-ups, crunches. Basically it works every area of your body. Brilliant!

** Tip: Do this on a yoga mat to avoid slipping.

Squats with dumbbells

This is the very minimum I do. 3 sets of 30 squats, as deep as I can manage taking into account the pitch and roll of the boat.

I will vary between just holding my dumbbells at shoulder height, and also pushing them above my head as I come up through the squat.

I will then hold my squat and do some arm exercises with the dumbbells. (If you don't have dumbbells these can be easily substituted with cans of food!)

Swimming & snorkeling

I have to admit the lure of lazing around the boat can be pure bliss that becomes habit forming. An easy way to kick yourself back into gear is to do laps of the boat each morning, or put mask and snorkel on and spend an hour or so enjoying the under water world – bigger fins can tone calf muscles in no time!

I also set myself to doing laps of a beach. My dog 'Moo' enjoys this one as she can swim with me, then go to shore when she tires.

walking bush tracks

You'll never know where you'll end up - and the reward is always right before your eyes!

So that's how we maintain our fitness - hopefully some inspiration there for you. As with everything - if you do what you love, you will no doubt have fun doing it - and likely keep it up !

Thanks for reading and if you think this would help others, I would be grateful if you would share via the links below - and as always feel free to ask me any questions through the comment box...