We’ve all been there, settling into your seat for what you know will be a long, inactive flight. You’d think this would offer a busy professional a much needed physical restbite. But there are many ironies in wellness, one of them being that even a tired body doesn’t necessarily call for total inactivity; it’s active rest that keeps us fresh and revitalised.
Sitting motionless for extended periods won’t just make you feel stiff; it can actually be dangerous. When you’re sedentary for hours on end, your body essentially goes into what we might call “aeroplane mode”, just like your phone.
Blood cells pool when you sit for long periods of time, which leads to poor circulation. Under these circumstances, your risk of blood clotting increases. Medical professionals have recognised that the kind of immobility inherent in long-haul flights can cause blood clots, known as deep vein thrombosis (DVT).
To lower risk factors and arrive at your destination without unnecessary muscle tension, it makes sense to have a strategy you can implement discreetly, even in a confined space, without disrupting your fellow travellers.
Let’s outline a winning strategy that’ll help you manage even the most gruelling flight times.
How your body experiences aeroplane travel
How Your Body Experiences Air Travel
1. Blood Circulation Slowdown: Reduced movement during flight slows circulation, blood begins to pool in the lower limbs, increasing your risk of swelling, discomfort, and, in extreme cases, clotting.
2. Muscle Deactivation: In the absence of regular movement, your major muscle groups, such as the glutes, calves, particularly in the lower body, become passive. Technically, oxygen and nutrients can’t efficiently reach tissues, resulting in stiffness and cramping.
3. Joint Stiffness: The seated position promotes shortened hip flexors, tight hamstrings, and reduced mobility in the lower back and neck. This can lead to joint stiffness and further muscle tension, especially if you’re already somewhat inflexible.
4. Lymphatic System Backup: Movement is essential for lymphatic drainage. Without it and combined with poor circulation, the waste products of cellular metabolism (lactic acid, carbon dioxide) aren’t effectively removed, which becomes physically uncomfortable and will begin to trigger pain signals absent of any actual injury, impact or strain.
Think of your body at flight a bit like a factory that isn’t getting new deliveries of supplies, and at the same time can’t remove its current waste production. Under those circumstances, it doesn’t take too long for it to become a toxic, unproductive environment prone to accidents and inefficiency.
Physical Challenges Inherent to Air Travel
Cabin Pressure Effects: Reduced oxygen levels and low humidity are a recipe for physical fatigue. Did you know that most aeroplane cabins are 10-20% humidity, while most other indoor environments are 30-60%? Actually, technically speaking, your next flight cabin might be drier than the Sahara desert in relative humidity. That’s why it’s so easy to become dehydrated on a plane.
Confined Space Psychology: When we fly, it’s normal to feel a lack of autonomy, there is an obvious compression of personal space, and our natural movement patterns and basic freedom of movement are inhibited. In addition to physical constraint, the lack of autonomy can feel uncomfortable, especially for decision makers.
Social Inhibition: Many people feel self-conscious performing stretching movements on a place, so learning which movements can be done subtly and respectfully can be very empowering.
Your In-Flight Exercise Toolkit
‘Stealth’ Exercises
These are a series of gentle exercises you can perform discreetly multiple times on your flight without getting up.
- Foot Pumps + Ankle Circles: Contract and lift your heels off the floor repeatedly to promote circulation, hold the position for 5-10 seconds. Then lower your toes until they reach the floor, repeat this exercise 3-5 times. Then raise your feet off the floor completely and rotate them in a circular motion in a clockwise and then counterclockwise motion five times each.
- Glute Squeezes – Activate your posterior chain by contracting your glutes for 5 seconds at a time; these are the same exercises you’re encouraged to do when donating blood, precisely because they temporarily increase blood flow. Tense your glute muscles for a static hold of 5 seconds, release for 5-10 seconds and repeat 5 times.
- Ab Bracing – Inhale deeply, then engage your core to make it feel like a block, as if you were primed to lift a heavy box. Hold for 15-30 seconds and repeat 3-5 times.
- Neck Rolls and Tilts – A simple exercise to relieve the tension from watching screens and an unusual sleeping position. With your arms and shoulders relaxed, tilt your head down to one side and hold for 3-5 seconds, then slowly roll to the opposite side and hold for 3-5 seconds, repeat 5 times.
Aisle Exercises
Excellent mobility exercises you can perform in the aisle or when you find yourself with a bit of space.
- Standing Heel-Toe Rocking – Gently shift weight from heels to toes repeatedly to re-engage your calves and stabilisers. This helps prevent muscle cramps and can lower the risk of blood clots. Do this for as long as you feel prudent instinctively, and make sure of it when you would otherwise be standing still, like waiting for the restroom.
- Wall Sit (against the galley wall) A little more involved this one, but fantastic if you find the 30-second hold activates glutes, thigh muscles, and improves circulation, it’s a great lower body activator you can do even with limited space.
- Torso Rotations With arms folded, rotate slowly left and right to mobilise the thoracic spine. This is excellent for relieving tension in your lower back, which could radiate pain to your hips. Don’t go further than feels comfortable, keep it gentle.
Suggested timing & schedule:
- Take-off to Meal Service: Aim to perform your ‘stealth’ exercises every 30-60 minutes.
- Post-Meal: Try to get into the aisle once your main meals have been cleared to perform your aisle mobility exercises.
- Final Hour Before Landing: Repeat a full cycle of stealth and aisle exercises in the final hour of your flight before your descent to arrive as fresh as possible.
Additional Tips & Tactics
Pre-Flight Workouts: As a personal trainer, my advice before a long-haul flight would be to pull your routine back slightly. Long travel is already a stressor for the body; you don’t necessarily want to compound that with your hardest workouts right before you go. I’d aim for a total body, active rest style session that gets your blood pumping, incorporates an element of mobility, but crucially won’t be a big drain on your central nervous system and delay the recovery or already sore muscles.
Post-Flight Workouts: On the day of arrival or the day after if you arrive late, it’s great to get another light, total body session in the bag. It helps reinvigorate your body and aids getting back into your natural circadian rhythm by encouraging deep sleep. It’ll offer a great bridge to regular training if you’re away for a while, or as an excellent placeholder if you are only away for a day or two before returning to your normal workout routine.
Return to First Principles with Nutrition: When travelling, I always encourage my online personal training clients to return to first principles thinking around nutrition. A day of exhausting travel isn’t the time to focus on the minutia of calorie counting, it’s about staying hydrated and making good wholesome food choices that help your body deal with the stress of travel.
Prioritise wellness and actively offset burnout: Perhaps the best way to prepare yourself for frequent air travel is to maintain a focus on general health & fitness. Because on the aggregate, you’ll be more resilient to stress, and be regularly working on the efficiency of your cardiovascular and circulatory systems. You’ll also begin each flight generally more mobile and free of muscle tension than you might otherwise.
Air travel doesn’t have to represent a backwards step where wellness is concerned. It’s perfectly possible to stay active, even in the context of an ultra-long-haul flight. View it as an opportunity to practice self-care rather than push beyond your ability to recovery, when you don’t have your normal wellness routine in place. By staying active and making good choices around healthy eating and hydration, you can turn up, perform excellently and return home without having lost ground on your fitness goals.
