This is part 2 of a series on health for private hire drivers
In part one, I discussed the importance of pacing yourself as an Uber driver to avoid burning out. Spending too much time behind the wheel and neglecting your health will have a negative impact not only on your earning potential but general well being.
In this series of articles on health, I am breaking down Health into 3 elements. Diet, fitness and sleep.
In this article, I will address fitness, how I stay fit and how I believe that after years of trial and error, I have a great formula which is perfect for private hire drivers.
Fitness, just like health is not binary. It’s not just a bunch of ones and zeros that make up a code. Its a lot more complex than that, with infinite possibilities and variations specific to the individuals age, body type, knowledge, time constraints, goals etc etc.
What works for a testosterone filled twenty something with plenty of spare time on his hand will not work for a forty year old with 3 kids and 2 jobs.
Devising an effective training programme similarly to designing an effective diet, comes down to knowledge again. But just like with health it’s not about adding more to the programme but in fact taking away and making it as simple as possible.
Bruce lee devised his own martial art called Jeet Kune Do. He didn’t fill it with thousands of techniques from all the martial arts to show how knowledgeable he was, but in fact stripped it down to the bare bones and purely kept what worked.
As a private hire driver, it is important that you have a fitness regime. It doesn’t matter if your young or old. Sitting In a car for 8 hours a day is not conducive to a healthy body.
Because we are self employed we more than likely work more hours than a typical 9-5 worker. This doesn’t leave us with much time or energy to dedicate to going to the gym.
Why You Don’t Need to Go to The Gym
When you think of fitness I’m sure you probably think of the gym, and that’s where we need a bit of a mindset shift. You don’t actually need to ever step foot in a gym and pay a costly monthly fee to get fit. I say that gym is the worse place you want to go to to get fit.
Firstly, it is too time consuming. The time it takes for you to pack your gym bag and get in your car to drive to the gym, you could have finished your home workout and carried on with your day.
Secondly, once you get to the gym, you’ll probably waste most of the time moving aimlessly from station to station not really doing anything effective.
Thirdly, and most importantly is the fact that being bound by having to go to a gym to workout is a huge barrier in your way. It provides you with so many excuses and ways out that you’ll eventually stop going all together.
‘The gym is closed’
‘I haven’t got enough time’
‘My gym buddy can’t make it’….and the list goes on.
When you work out at home there are no barriers meaning there will never be anything stopping you from performing a few basic bodyweight exercises . They can be done anytime and anywhere.
Working out really needs to become a habit and to make it a habit you have to stick to the process. You have to set up the process in a way that will give you the best chance of succeeding and that will come from having the least barriers possible in your way.
Having no excuses and making your workouts non negotiable will keep you on the path of your goal, whether it’s to lose weight or gain muscle.
It is very easy to convince yourself out of going to the gym when you have work, a list of chores to do and limited time.
A quick and effective workout without having to leave the comfort of your own home is definitely much more appealing.
Keeping your workouts short gives you the best possible chance to stay on the path to success because staying motivated is that hardest exercise of them all.
So What Exactly do These Short Home Workouts Look Like.
For many years I would do High Intensity Interval training (HIIT). These are really short but intense workouts with many proven positive benefits from fat loss to increasing Human Growth Hormone and Testosterone which drops drastically as we get older. If your interested in finding out more about HIIT you can download my free Ebook here.
As effective and quick as these workouts where, I still found myself struggling to fit them in as my work load increased to the point where I stopped working out completely.
This led me to simplify my workout even further to the point where it would be impossible not to do.The only possible reason I would skip a workout now is if my arm fell off or if lost the mental battle with myself and gave into procrastination and laziness. As good as you feel after the exercise, the daily feeling of accomplishment of not giving into the negative voice in your head telling you it’s OK to skip this workout is even greater.
What I Do to Stay Fit as an Uber Driver
My workout now consists of 2 sets of push ups a day. 1 is an absolute minimum but I try my best to get 2 in. The reason I recommend the push up is because it is a compound exercise. It targets multiple muscles at the same time which means it gives you the most bang for your back. The push up targets your chest, arms, shoulders, back and core muscles. You will burn calories doing them and will also ramp up your metabolic rate so your body is still burning calories while you drive. No equipment is required, you can do them anywhere and they take seconds to do.
If you want a complete break down of the push up you can find it in an article I wrote here which is an in depth look at the push up, its benefits and how to do the properly.
I recommend that you start off slow. We want to use the same concept we spoke about with regards to health and diet. Think of fitness as a marathon not a race. If you start off hard you will burn out and fail. Ease into it and slowly build up the volume.
On your first day start with 2 push ups following the best possible form. All the way up and all the way down. Do loads of sets throughout your day. When you wake up, when your waiting for the kettle to boil, before you get in the shower, during the adverts on tv etc etc…
If you can do 2 reps with great form, you move on to 3 the next day. So on and so forth. I know many of you are reading this now with a slight grin on your face thinking that this is child play. I would have felt the same a few years ago too but hear me out. This is a long term strategy. Its a low impact exercise that you can do everyday and slowly increase the volume to where a few months down the line you have built a solid foundation and amassed a few thousand push ups in the bank, with only a few minutes a day. That is physical exercise you would have never done if you continued with the notion that you will join the gym when you get the time.
Body weight squats are a great alternative which offer the same benefits but mainly target your legs and core muscles. Ideally you want to combine the squats (lower body) with the pushups (upper body). Personally I have stuck to only doing the push ups, because as I have already discussed, and I can’t stress this enough, you have to keep the workload realistic. There is no point in starting something if you are not going to stick with.
I have been using this method for 2 years now and can safely say that I am in the best shape of my life despite being the busiest I have ever been and spending the least amount of time working out. This is coming for someone who has spent years intermittently in the gym, doing High Intensity Interval Training and various Martial Arts.
Sticking with one thing and doing it consistently for a long time had yielded far better results.
Remember, getting fit doesn’t have to be complicated, hard or time consuming. The trick is to find a physical activity that you enjoy. Something that that will only take a few minutes to complete that is going to be taxing enough to cause your body to adapt but not too strenuous that it will burn you out. Do it daily and make it a habit. Do it consistently and over time you will feel physically and mentally fitter and stronger which will lead to your body being more than capable to cope with the strain and stress of being a private hire driver. Who doesn’t want to be fitter and earn more money to boot. You can kill these two birds with one stone by literally dedicated a few minutes of your time every day.
Ultimately, the healthier and more focused you are, the more money you will earn as an Uber driver..
