Videos: How To Do a Full-Body Workout Inside the Cab of a Semi

Okay people. It’s the beginning of a new year. We’ve all spent the holidays stuffing ourselves with turkey, pumpkin pie, fruitcake, and roast beast. Then many of you drank enough to drown a hippo on New Year’s Eve. Then in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day, you promptly puked every last calorie of your holiday gluttony into the floorboard of your best friend’s car. Better make that your EX best friend’s car. So what’s next?

Why, it’s New Year’s resolution time, of course! Personally, I don’t make resolutions. I’ve pretty much mastered the art of disappointing myself enough without the added pressure of a bunch of resolutions that I know I’ll never keep. But I know some of you are gluttons for punishment, so this post may help you out.

Undoubtedly, at least one of you out there have decided that this will be the year you’re going to get in shape. Well, I’ve got something that can help you out. It’s really designed to help truckers, but it can be used by anyone. It all started when I decided to start working out and being the whiner that I am, I started tweeting about it. That’s when I got the question:

“How do you do a workout inside your truck?”

Man, I’ve been asked this question at least a million times (give or take 999,996). In the past I’ve always said, “One of these days, I’ll make a video and show you.” Today is that day.

I’ve made two videos, each of them a little under 15 minutes long. In typical fashion, I’ve tried to spruce them up a bit with a little bad humor. I’ll let you decide whether I succeeded or if I earned a spot on the FAIL Blog. Doing these videos has taught me one thing for sure. Video is hard. As long as it takes for me to write a blog post, it’s much quicker than doing videos. So don’t be expecting this to turn into a video blog anytime soon.

As a matter of fact, let me give you a bit of a disclaimer here. The audio and video quality isn’t exactly what I’d call stellar. In fact, it kinda sucks. I tried using both of my good video cameras, but neither of them had a wide enough lens to get the shots I needed in such a cramped space. That left me with the built-in camera and microphone on my computer. And sometimes they just weren’t up to the task as you’ll easily see by some poorly framed shots. Unfortunately, I don’t have one of those fancy pants new MacBooks with the high-definition camera. I’ve got the older, “it sucks but it’s better than nothing” camera.

The lighting made it worse. I tried to shoot during the daylight, but the contrast between the sunlight and the interior of the truck made it virtually unwatchable. So I shot it at night, using only the interior cab lights in my truck. I did the best I could, so don’t be too mean when you leave a comment. You were planning to leave a comment, weren’t you?

So what have we got for you today? Well, Video #1 is the Introduction and the abs workout. Video #2 is the dumbbell workout. Perhaps another disclaimer is in order here. I am NOT a professional trainer. Never have been. Never will be. So do all these exercises at your own risk. Start out easy and work your way up. I’d tell you to see a physician before you start any exercise program, but you and I both know that you’re not going to give a doctor any dough for something as trivial as that. I guess there really isn’t a lot more to say, so for once, I won’t. Here you go. Let me know what you think by leaving that comment we discussed earlier.

One last thing. This is a G-rated video. I’m wearing a short-sleeve shirt and shorts. Trust me. You really don’t want to see my Austin Powers chest hair. Enjoy!

Here’s a couple of links that might help:

The Men’s Health Abs Diet Workout

Proper techniques for dumbbell exercises

Tags: dumbbell, dumbbell workout, exercise, FAIL Blog, holidays, New Year's Day, New Year's resolutions, truck, truck driving, trucker, trucker stories, truckers, trucking, trucking industry, trucking jobs, trucking life, Twitter, workout, YouTube