Ah, the open road. Ultimate freedom. No rules. (Kind of.) You know what I mean, right? There’s something about that feeling of freedom and possibility that only a road trip can bring.

But with freedom comes responsibility. And one of those responsibilities is taking care of our health. After all, without it, these road trips aren’t really possible.

If you’re heading out for only a couple of days, forgoing a workout or two isn’t detrimental. But most of our trips last longer than that. Some of yours may last an entire season (or years!) at a time. And depending on your particular situation, you may need your doctor’s opinion before you begin a program of any kind.

Because we want to stay as healthy as possible for as long as possible, we decided to spend some time thinking about and researching the best ways to stay in shape on the road, and we wanted to share that with you, our fellow venturers!

Are you like us and prefer to follow the good weather? If so, we’re all in luck because this means the great outdoors can be our gym. Walking, jogging, biking, canoeing, swimming, rollerblading, kayaking, tennis, hikes, touch football, brisk walks with the doggies. Pleasant weather makes all of this possible.

But what do you do on rainy days? Or those it’s-too-hot-to-leave-our-air-conditioned-camper days? Lucky for all of us, there are so many options!

Almost all of our campers and coaches have a DVD player. So bring along your Tony Horton or Julian Michaels or Jane Fonda or whatever floats your proverbial boat to get your 30 minutes of cardio and strength training in each day. Exercise comes in many forms to include yoga, stretching, etc. Use your body weight for resistance training – push ups, planks, lunges, squats. And remember, you do not have to do those DVD moves exactly as they’re demonstrated or with the same number of reps. Just so it gets you moving in the privacy of your own RV, who cares? The point is, you’re doing something.

Do you belong to a national gym chain? If so, look into their “nationwide” gym options. For example, with Planet Fitness, $19.99 a month membership gives you access to any Planet Fitness franchise location. (They currently have 810 U.S. locations.) That’s a pretty awesome deal that we’ve taken advantage of during our RV trips.  [Potential] money-saving tip: we spent that $19.99 per month for their nationwide gym membership. A $9.99 per month single-gym membership was also available. Upon looking back a year to see how that extra $10 worked for us, it was a loss. In other words, it would’ve saved us approximately $100 that year had we done the single-gym membership and then just paid the $5 visiting fee for each non-local gym (of the same chain) we visited.

LA Fitness also has nationwide-access options with over 600 locations. However with this gym, we elected to exercise the money-saving tip referenced above. So we belong to our local LA fitness only but can go to any other location in the U.S. for just $5.00 per visit.

So the way this works for us, whenever we will be traveling to a certain area, if we find more than one RV park that suits our needs, then we’ll also search the internet for the nearest gym that we can use and stay at the RV park nearest to that gym. Exercise, or at least the option to accomplish it, is very important in our lives.

Another rainy day idea for fitness is to see what the area has to offer by way of indoor recreation. Indoor rock climbing, indoor water parks, or even just a vast mall to briskly walk through will do the trick.

The point is: we’ve got to keep moving, no matter what our age. Walking around the RV parks we visit is great, but it’s even better to add in some actual sweat-time to those walks. Get that heart rate elevated and then reap the cardio benefits.

The American Heart Association recommends a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week. That’s just over 20 minutes a day. (Or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise a week). Check out their website as it’s a wealth of information.

A walk with the pooch can be good if done with some expediency to it – good for the both of you. We need to get our heart rates up, pump those arms, and enjoy the fresh air. And here’s a plus for those who are in a time-crunch: You can divide your exercise time into two or three segments each day if you like.

We’re curious as to what you do to stay fit in flight – RV flight that is.

Let us know what works for you!