Airline Pilots! Learn How to Improve Your Fitness Using These 4 Simple Tips

Aug 11
13:10

2011

John Baines

John Baines

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Being an airline pilot is not a conducive lifestyle to staying fit. You're busy flying multiple legs per day across multiple timezones. This in effect can wreck havoc on your circadian rhythm as well as your health not to mention the pounds that might creep up on you. However this does not have to be the case. You can still squeeze in time for fitness by following these 4 simple tips to improving your fitness for pilots.

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Write Up A Fitness Plan

The first step to improving your fitness is to write up a fitness plan. This plan can save you time by allocating how much time you dedicate to exercising. While the government health department recommends 30 to 60 minutes of exercise per day,Airline Pilots! Learn How to Improve Your Fitness Using These 4 Simple Tips Articles you may not have that time. You can still get an effective workout in less than 30 minutes, three to four times per week by using the right exercises.

Within your plan you should list down how much weight you would like to lose if you're keen on losing weight, which foods to consume, which days you'll exercise as well as which exercises to perform to keep fit. By writing up your own plan you'll be a lot more productive with your fitness.

Consume Healthy, Nutrient Dense Foods

As part of your quest to improving your fitness you should be consuming healthy, nutrient dense foods. Now you maybe thinking you have no time to prepare all this food however it really doesn't take much time to prepare it. All you really need is just one free night to prepare your meals for the entire week. Usually this is done on a Sunday night after grocery shopping during the weekend.

So for example if you went shopping for vegetables such as tomatoes, lettuce and bell peppers you would slice them up and place them into individual containers for which you can prepare them into your meals for the week saving you precious time. This can also apply to other food such as chicken. You grill them up on a night that's free, slice them into pieces and store them in the fridge for when you next prepare your meals to take with you.

Healthy foods you should consume include brown rice, wholegrain bread, wholegrain pasta, rolled oats, skinless chicken breast, turkey, ground beef, salmon, whole eggs, milk, cheese, fruits and green leafy vegetables.

Choose HIIT Over Traditional Cardio

Time is crucial when it comes to doing exercise. This is why I recommend High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT over traditional cardiovascular training. HIIT is superior to traditional cardio in the sense that not only can it be done in under 30 minutes it can also facilitate more fat to be lost than traditional cardio. HIIT works by alternating between moderate and high intensity exercises for a number of sets. This in effect elevates your metabolism for an entire 24 hour period after you exercise thereby allowing you to burn more fat than traditional cardio.

Incorporate Resistance Training Into Your Workouts

As part of a balanced workout one should perform both cardiovascular and resistance training to further improve your fitness. Many people neglect resistance training thereby decreasing their potential for fat loss and fitness. However this does not have to be the case. If you can dedicate two or three workout sessions per week to resistance training you will notice a vast improvement to not only your health but also the way you look.

The best resistance exercises include push ups, pull ups, chin ups, dips, body weight squats, pistol squats and if you have access to the gym; deadlifts, barbell squats and bench press. These exercises recruit multiple muscle groups thereby stimulating a flood of muscle building hormones such as IGF-1 (Insulin Like Growth Factor-1), HGH (Human Growth Hormone) and Testosterone.