How Truckers Can Get More Active While On-the-Road with Garmin
Fitness and nutrition coach Marc Rohde is Garmin’s official trucker fitness consultant and brand ambassador. Rohde brings more than 26 years of knowledge in the fitness industry as well as a wealth of coaching experience. Furthermore, Marc has a great understanding of the trucking world and the fitness challenges that truck drivers around the globe experience daily. We hope you enjoy his guest blog below.
The number of truck drivers with health issues are alarming. Studies in Germany show that 41% of drivers experience back pain and 22% are overweight or gaining weight. In addition, 14% have problems with their joints and some also experience issues such as heart disease and mental illness. Let’s take this as a serious wake-up call for all truckers out there! As a professional fitness coach, I have previously worked together with truck manufacturers to improve the health and fitness of truck drivers via online training videos. With the launch of the Instinct® 2 – dēzl™ Edition, a fitness wearable specifically designed for truckers, we can now take it a step further and fight these health issues.
From my experience working with truck drivers, many struggle to keep healthy while driving for many hours per day. Let’s face it: a professional trucker’s life is full of stress, lack of sleep, and a huge amount of responsibility. Plus, a truck’s cabin is often limited on space and most of the time your body is stuck for hours upon hours in an unnatural, seated position. This can unfortunately lead to problems with back pain and weight gain. Furthermore, your mealtimes are totally dictated by when you are driving and loading or unloading your cargo. Trying to fit a visit to the gym into your schedule isn’t realistic and therefore it’s just so easy to fall into the pattern of drive, eat, sleep, repeat. For many, these are not the optimal ingredients for health and wellbeing. Fortunately, there are ways to manage the situation to your advantage without creating extra workload for yourself.
SMALL SOLUTION WITH A BIG IMPACT
Recently I was able to test the Instinct® 2 dēzl™ Edition, the first trucker smartwatch from Garmin. Aiming to improve the health and wellbeing of truck drivers as well as providing features to make day-to-day life on-the-road as simple as possible. First of all, this black beauty is rugged…very rugged! Built to last according to the Military Standard 810 for shock and thermal resistance. Plus, the scratch-resistant screen with strengthened glass protects against damages while you’re loading or unloading your truck. Garmin understands you’re on the road for long periods of time, that’s why this smartwatch has an extra-long battery life of up to 28 days in smartwatch mode. It also comes with a sweat proof silicone comfort band so you can wear it day and night.
Now onto the most essential part; the Instinct® 2 – dēzl™ Edition delivers important health metrics and is built to suit the needs of the trucking lifestyle. It monitors your heart rate, stress level, body battery (how much energy you have left for the day), it tracks your daily steps, calories burned and more. It even measures your sleep so you can easily see if you had a good night’s rest or not. See it as an extra on-board computer, but for your body. So, if you notice on the watch that your stress level is too high, for example, the watch will recommend to take a minute to perform a short breathing exercise to reduce that stress. Just like if the oil temperature of your truck is too high, you need to take it easy as well.
These metrics come standard with most Garmin wearables, but from my point of view as a coach and trying to improve your fitness level, I really love the built-in short-break workouts that were specifically designed for truckers! At Garmin they know that your breaks are short and can be at any point in the day, so you need to make the most of them. Just pair the watch with the dēzl smartphone app and you can view free tutorials for quick workouts that fit within standard break times. They shake and shape up your muscles, improve the strength of your back, make your joints more flexible and burn extra calories. These exercises don’t take up much time but are essential for your body when you’ve been in a seated position for a long time. I cannot stress enough how important this is for truckers. Just like with your truck; a lack of maintenance will damage your body. Sure, adapting to a healthier lifestyle isn’t easy, so the watch will give you break and exercise reminders to keep you moving when you can.
KEY FEATURES
The Instinct® 2 – dēzl™ Edition is literally packed with innovative features that can help drivers on the road. Here are my top picks of essential all-day monitoring key features for professional truck drivers:
- Heart rate1 – gives an insight into your personal health and can help you discover the right intensity of exercise for your body
- Sleep monitoring – full breakdown of sleep stages that provides insights for better rest on the road
- Body Battery – helps to manage your personal energy levels around the clock. It lets you know if you are ready for action or needing to take it easy.
- Stress level – monitor how stressed are you behind the wheel, during a traffic jam or even while you sleep
- Respiration – indicates your physical fitness. Fitter people tend to have lower respiration rates.
- Hydration – do you drink enough during the day? The benefits of staying hydrated include joint protection, waste removal, weight loss promotion and more.
- Pulse Ox2 – estimates the percentage of oxygenated blood available in your blood. This value can be influenced by altitude, activity, and an individual’s health.
Having all these health metrics readily available to you, 24 hours a day, helps to give you a clearer picture of your health for a deeper understanding about your individual power output and the correlation on your targeted movement goals. In addition to these points, you can pair the watch with the Garmin Connect app which turns all your daily stats and activities into a clear dashboard on your phone.
But there’s more:
- For ultimate convenience, use Garmin Pay contactless payments from the smartwatch to quickly pass through checkout lines at the fill up station
- Plan your stops along the route by using daily break timers with notifications to make sure you make the most of your time out of the driver’s seat
- Pair the smartwatch with any of Garmin’s dēzl LGV series trucking sat navs to view break planning timers, health metrics and wellness suggestions, directly on the high-resolution navigation screen
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
If you´re a trucker looking to keep or start a healthy lifestyle, I strongly recommend the Instinct® 2 – dēzl™ Edition. To re-cap, here are the 3 key points about this new wearable:
- Monitors your health metrics from your wrist
- Sends break and exercise reminders to keep you moving when you can
- Gives access to short-break workouts – specifically designed for truckers
Besides, it has so many other features to benefit from during your day-to-day working life and time away from the cab. In these times, health and self-care is more important than ever and your body is as much a machine as your truck is.
2 This is not a medical device and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or monitoring of any medical condition; see Garmin.com/ataccuracy. Pulse Ox not available in all countries.
