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Working Long Hours? 5 Ways Tradies Can Keep Their Muscle and Strength
You were training regularly. Then the overtime started, the travel got longer, or the new job turned out to be harder on the body than expected. Now getting to the gym four nights a week feels like another job.
For tradies working long hours, keeping the muscle and strength you already have can be a sensible goal. You can return to chasing bigger lifts when work settles down.
The useful changes are often fairly ordinary: move sessions to days that suit, cut unnecessary sets, shorten the trip to the gym and stop leaving food and sleep to chance. Here are five places to start.
1 Use the weekend without wrecking it
If you are repeatedly missing weekday sessions, put one on your day off. Book a realistic time, tell anyone it affects and leave the rest of the day available for family, jobs at home and a bit of rest.
One Saturday session plus a shorter midweek session might fit better than four after-work sessions that rarely happen. If Saturday and Sunday are your only options, an upper-body day and a lower-body day can spread the work. You do not have to cram two punishing full-body workouts into the weekend.
Those are scheduling examples, not a universal programme. Choose exercises and an amount of work you can recover from before the next shift. A big leg session on Sunday may need adjusting if Monday means hours on ladders.
If your days off fall midweek, use those instead. The point is to train when you have some time and energy available, rather than repeatedly booking a session into the worst part of your week.
2 Learn what maintenance volume actually means
Mike Israetel and Renaissance Periodization use maintenance volume, or MV, for the amount of training needed to maintain your current muscle size. It is different from the amount needed to grow. Their volume landmarks are starting points to individualise, not fixed rules for every lifter. 1
Research supports the broader idea that maintaining adaptations can take considerably less training than building them. In one study, younger adults retained recently gained muscle with substantial reductions in training volume. Older adults did not respond the same way, so there is no single reduction that works for everyone. 2
For a busy stretch, start by trimming extra sets and exercises from the programme you already know. Keep a few useful movements and make the working sets count. Cutting volume does not mean turning every set into an easy warm-up.
Keep practising the lifts you want to stay strong at, using manageable loads and good technique. You do not need a maximum-effort test after a draining shift.
Write down your weights and reps. Look at the trend across several sessions, not one flat day. If performance keeps dropping, review your training alongside food, sleep and workload. You may need a different balance rather than simply more sets.
When work eases, you can gradually add training back in if you want to pursue more growth.
3 Protect the time around the workout
A 40-minute session can cost well over an hour once you add the drive, parking and getting changed. Fixing that may be more useful than finding a supposedly perfect programme.
Look for a gym close to home, close to work or already on your route. Pack your gear before the shift. If going home means you rarely leave again, try stopping at the gym on the way.
If your job takes you to different sites, a membership with access to multiple branches can be handy. Chains such as Snap Fitness and Anytime Fitness offer access beyond your home club. You could train near that day’s site while the worst of the traffic clears, shower there if facilities are available, then head home. Or train near work before your shift, provided the earlier start does not cut into your sleep. Check your membership’s access rules and start date, shower facilities, and any home-club transfer or fee conditions.
A basic home setup can also help, provided it lets you train safely with enough resistance for your exercises. You do not need to recreate a commercial gym before it becomes useful.
Put the session in your calendar and agree on the time with the people who share your life. Training before work is an option, but only if you can get to bed early enough. Moving the workout should not mean permanently shortening your sleep.
4 Pack enough food and keep water handy
When you are rushing between jobs, it is easy to eat less than you need all day and arrive home ravenous. Pack proper meals and something easy to eat when a break appears.
Include protein regularly, along with carbohydrate to help cover the energy demands of work and training. Think chicken and rice, a tuna sandwich, yoghurt and fruit, or tofu with noodles. Keep perishable food properly chilled.
For healthy adults who exercise, the International Society of Sports Nutrition suggests roughly 1.4–2.0 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. For an 80 kg person, that is about 112–160 grams. It is a useful guide, not a reason to ignore total food intake. 3
Keep drinking water accessible, particularly on hot jobs. Heat protection also needs rest breaks and cooling; a bigger bottle alone is not enough. With prolonged sweating, electrolyte replacement may be useful. Follow the heat-safety arrangements for your workplace rather than forcing down a fixed daily litre target. 4
Creatine monohydrate is optional. A usual maintenance dose is 3–5 grams daily, and loading is not essential. It can support resistance-training performance, but it cannot replace training, meals or recovery. Get individual advice first if you have kidney disease or another relevant health condition. 5
5 Give sleep a chance and cut back the booze
If the alarm goes off early, protecting bedtime matters. Adults should regularly get at least seven hours of sleep, with seven to nine hours an appropriate range for many. Keep your sleep and wake times reasonably consistent where work allows. 6
Prepare tomorrow's lunch and work gear before you settle in for the evening. Set a finish time for scrolling or television. These small decisions can save you from borrowing an hour from sleep every night.
Cutting back on alcohol, or skipping it, is another useful move. Alcohol can disrupt sleep, even if it initially makes you feel sleepy. A big drinking session is particularly unhelpful when you already have limited time to recover. 7
During a run of long shifts, aim to keep a manageable training routine going and arrive at work rested enough to do the job safely. Holding your ground for a while is a worthwhile result.
References
1. Israetel M. Training volume landmarks for muscle growth. Renaissance Periodization. The maintenance volume framework and the need to individualise training volume.
2. Bickel CS, Cross JM, Bamman MM. Exercise dosing to retain resistance training adaptations in young and older adults. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2011. A controlled study of reduced training doses following an initial training period.
3. Jäger R and colleagues. International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: protein and exercise. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2017. Protein guidance for healthy exercising adults.
4. US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Workplace recommendations for heat stress. Workplace hydration, rest and cooling guidance.
5. Kreider RB and colleagues. International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2017. Creatine monohydrate dosing and evidence.
6. Watson NF and colleagues. Joint consensus statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society on the recommended amount of sleep for a healthy adult: methodology and discussion. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2015. Adult sleep-duration recommendations.
7. US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Hangovers. Alcohol-related sleep disruption.
General information for healthy adults. Get individual advice for an injury, health condition or persistent fatigue, and follow workplace heat and fatigue controls.