Fitness is a huge part of our lives. It’s something we have taken pretty seriously over the last few years. However, when we decided to live in our RV, we had to revisit our philosophy of fitness. Our routines needed to be transformed and made conducive to the nomad lifestyle.

We have truly fallen in love with the process of taking care of our bodies, focusing on our health, and challenging ourselves to achieve a higher level of life satisfaction. The RV lifestyle allowed us the opportunity to refine the philosophy behind our workouts and create a new fitness regimen that is even more fun than what we used to do! 

Functional 

We love doing workouts that relate to the natural way our bodies are supposed to do things. It isn’t about isolated movements but more about using multiple muscle groups together to reflect natural activity.

Minimalist

It’s no secret that we don’t have room in an RV for an in-home gym… so minimalism was a must in our workouts. We have found ways to work out our bodies with almost zero equipment. A lot of RVers rave about the Planet Fitness memberships that can be used at any gym nationwide, but we found that it just wasn’t our style. We love the ease and convenience of working out outside of the gym (and usually out in nature too).

Adventurous

Our last piece is trying to make sure that whatever we are doing is exciting and fun! We like to keep it interesting, and as we travel, some of our workouts even help us take advantage of the cool places we get to see. We are RVers for a reason after all!

Our workouts never look the same from month to month or even from day to day. We usually rotate between hiking, climbing, yoga, hitting up the occasional RV park fitness center, kettlebell flows, boxing, jiu-jitsu, archery, and running. All of these activities perfectly line up with our philosophy on functionality, minimalism, and adventure. Having a variety of workouts that we genuinely love gives us something to look forward to and keeps our routine interesting! 

One of the most fun parts of living on the road is getting to go new places with our workouts, such as hiking in a new mountain range, training at a new jiu-jitsu gym, or finding a new archery range or climbing gym. But as fun as those workouts are, we can’t do those all the time, and we have a lot of fun workouts we do at home as well. These are the things we use to create our own home/outdoor gym that is small enough to fit in our RV.

• Puzzle Mats

These are so amazing because they turn any gravel pad into something you can work out on and walk on barefoot. Perfect for when you are in an RV park that doesn’t have an open area of grass. We use these for rolling around and practicing jiu jitsu, yoga, or bodyweight movements. The added bonus for RV life is that they deconstruct into 2’ x 2’ squares that are easily stored. Plus, once you’re done with your workout, the mats are soft enough to sit and meditate on or lie down for a nap and some sunbathing.

• Kettlebell

The minimalist lifestyle means we can’t have a bunch of weights everywhere. Grabbing a kettlebell lets us do a bunch of functional movements like kettlebell swings & deadlifts, as well as basic weightlifting movements like squats, presses, and curls. We can get a ton of different workouts in with just this one item!

• Jump Rope

If you want something super small and easy to pack away, then a jump rope is perfect. Whether you want to use it for just a good warm-up or get weight ropes for a full workout, your body will thank you! Tyler likes to use the jump rope to get his cardio in outside on the puzzle mats, especially when there isn’t a great running spot nearby.

• MMA Gloves & Focus Mitts

Sometimes, it’s just fun to punch stuff. And each other when we’re wearing gloves and focus mitts! We’ll usually either watch YouTube videos for different combinations or just run around and have a good time. This is definitely one of our most fun and most exhausting workouts. Don’t believe simple boxing is a ridiculously hard workout? Dare you to shadowbox hard for 2 minutes straight and see how it feels…

• Short Foam Roller & Tiger Tail

There are a lot of different tools you can use to take care of your body in between workouts, but for our minimalism lifestyle, we went with the short foam roller, tiger tail, and tennis balls because they are easy to stow in a cabinet. After getting rid of a ton of crazy myofascial release tools when we moved into the RV, we can say with confidence that this short list is all we need!

Fitness for us is about bettering ourselves every single day. It doesn’t matter how we do that, just as long as we get out there and get our bodies moving. Find a way to make fitness work for you in some way that brings you joy and makes working out fun!