A long flight can be the beginning of an incredible vacation. It can also mean spending five, eight, or even ten hours sitting in a relatively small space — followed by walking through an airport, carrying luggage, navigating stairs, and suddenly asking your body to be active again.
If you’re traveling after 50 or 60, preparing for the flight should involve more than deciding what goes in your carry-on. Your body needs to be ready too.
Long periods of sitting can contribute to stiffness, and extended immobility during long-distance travel can also increase the risk of blood clots in susceptible individuals.1,2
The good news is that you don’t need a complicated workout. A few simple exercises can help you work on the mobility, strength, and movement you’ll use before, during, and after your trip.
Here are seven exercises to start practicing before your next long flight — plus what you should know about staying mobile while traveling.
Why Can Long Flights Be Hard on Your Body?
Think about the position you maintain on an airplane. For hours, you may sit with your hips bent, knees bent, ankles relatively still, back supported in the same position, shoulders rounded, and body moving very little.
Then the plane lands. Suddenly you need to stand up, reach into an overhead compartment, lift luggage, walk through a large airport, climb stairs, navigate transportation, and possibly begin sightseeing that same day.
That is a dramatic transition from prolonged inactivity to activity. Preparing beforehand can make that transition easier.
Long-Distance Travel and Blood Clots: What Should You Know?
There is another reason movement matters during long trips. Extended periods of limited mobility can contribute to venous stasis, or slower blood flow in the veins of the legs. This is one factor involved in the development of venous thromboembolism, or VTE.1
VTE includes deep vein thrombosis (DVT) — a blood clot that develops in a deep vein, usually in the leg — and pulmonary embolism (PE), when part of a clot travels to the lungs.
Long-distance travel is often defined as travel lasting more than about four hours.1,2
Importantly, the overall risk of travel-associated VTE is relatively low for most travelers without additional risk factors. Risk increases with longer travel duration and with individual risk factors.1
Those risk factors can include previous DVT or PE, active cancer, recent surgery, hospitalization or trauma, prolonged limited mobility, obesity, estrogen-containing medications or hormone replacement therapy, pregnancy or the postpartum period, certain clotting disorders, family history of VTE, and increasing age.1
If you have additional risk factors, discuss your travel plans with your healthcare provider before a long trip.
Exercise Before the Trip — and Move During the Trip
There are two separate goals.
Before Your Trip
Build enough mobility, strength, and endurance to handle the physical demands of traveling.
During Your Trip
Avoid remaining completely motionless for hours at a time.
The CDC recommends moving the legs frequently during long-distance travel and considers periodic walking and calf-muscle exercises reasonable strategies for reducing prolonged immobility.1,2
With that distinction in mind, here are seven useful exercises to practice before your trip.
Exercise 1: Ankle Pumps
Ankle pumps are simple, but they are particularly relevant to travel because the calf muscles help move blood through the legs.
How to Do Them
Sit with your feet comfortably positioned. Alternate between pulling your toes toward you and pointing your toes away from you. Move through a comfortable range. Try 20–30 repetitions.
Why Practice Them?
Ankle pumps move the ankle through its available range, activate the calf muscles, are easy to perform while seated, and can also be performed during a flight.
The CDC specifically recommends ankle and calf movement during prolonged travel.2
Travel Tip
You can perform ankle pumps periodically while sitting in your airplane seat.
Exercise 2: Seated Heel Raises
This is another simple way to activate your calf muscles while seated.
How to Do Them
Sit with both feet flat on the floor. Keep your toes down and raise both heels, pause briefly, then slowly lower. Perform 15–20 repetitions.
Why Practice Them?
Heel raises work the calf muscles and provide movement without requiring much space.
The CDC specifically lists raising and lowering the heels while keeping the toes on the floor as one option for maintaining leg movement during long periods of sitting.2
Exercise 3: Sit-to-Stands
Travel requires you to repeatedly get up from airplane seats, airport chairs, taxis, restaurant chairs, and hotel furniture. Sit-to-stands train exactly that movement.
How to Do Them
Sit near the front of a sturdy chair. Place your feet underneath you. Lean forward slightly and stand. Then slowly sit back down. Try 8–12 repetitions.
Make It Easier
Use the armrests.
Make It Harder
Use less assistance from your arms or hold an appropriate amount of resistance.
Why Practice Them?
Sit-to-stands strengthen the hips and legs and directly train one of the most common movements you’ll perform throughout your trip.
Exercise 4: Standing Calf Raises
Once you’re comfortable with seated heel raises, standing calf raises provide a greater strengthening challenge.
How to Do Them
Stand near a counter or sturdy chair for support. Rise onto your toes. Pause briefly. Slowly lower. Perform 10–15 repetitions.
Why Practice Them?
Your calf muscles contribute to walking, stair climbing, balance, and forward propulsion. You’ll likely use them far more once your vacation begins than you did while sitting on the airplane.
Exercise 5: Standing Hip Flexor Stretch
Hours of sitting keep your hips in a flexed position. A gentle hip-flexor stretch can help restore movement after prolonged sitting.
How to Do It
Stand in a staggered stance near a stable support. Keep your trunk upright and gently shift your pelvis forward until you feel a stretch near the front of the hip on the back leg. Hold approximately 20–30 seconds. Repeat on each side.
Why Practice It?
Adequate hip mobility helps with walking, standing upright, taking longer steps, and climbing stairs. Avoid forcing the stretch or arching excessively through your lower back.
Exercise 6: Step-Ups
Think about how many steps and curbs you may encounter during travel. Airports, train stations, hotels, museums, historic sites, and European cities can all involve substantial stair climbing.
How to Do Them
Use a low, stable step. Step up with one foot. Bring the other foot onto the step. Step back down with control. Perform approximately 8–10 repetitions on each side. Use a railing when needed.
Why Practice Them?
Step-ups challenge leg strength, hip strength, balance, and stair-climbing ability. This makes them particularly useful when preparing for a walking-heavy vacation.
Exercise 7: Suitcase Carry
This exercise is often overlooked. But think about how often you handle luggage while traveling — carrying a suitcase, lifting a carry-on, walking with a bag, and maneuvering luggage through an airport.
How to Do It
Hold an appropriately weighted dumbbell or similar safe object at one side. Stand tall and walk a short distance. Switch sides.
Why Practice It?
A suitcase carry challenges grip strength, trunk control, posture, walking, and balance while carrying something.
Start with a manageable load. The objective is not to see how heavy an object you can carry. It is to prepare for the actual demands of travel.
A Simple Pre-Flight Travel Workout
You could combine these exercises into a short routine:
- Ankle pumps: 20–30 repetitions
- Seated heel raises: 15–20 repetitions
- Sit-to-stands: 8–12 repetitions
- Standing calf raises: 10–15 repetitions
- Hip-flexor stretch: 20–30 seconds each side
- Step-ups: 8–10 each side
- Suitcase carry: 30–60 seconds each side
This is not meant to be a universal exercise prescription. Modify the exercises according to your abilities, balance, medical conditions, and current fitness.
Don’t Wait Until the Night Before Your Flight
These exercises are most useful as part of your pre-travel preparation, not as a one-time workout before leaving for the airport.
If your trip will involve significant walking, stairs, luggage, golf, or sightseeing, begin preparing several weeks ahead when possible. Your body adapts to repeated training — not one workout.
Think about your itinerary. If you’re planning to walk several miles each day for seven consecutive days, your training should gradually begin resembling those demands.
What Should You Do During the Flight?
This is where the updated travel guidance becomes particularly important. For long-distance travel, the CDC recommends avoiding prolonged immobility when possible.1,2
Move Your Ankles
Periodically perform ankle pumps, heel raises, and toe raises. These can usually be done while seated.
Contract Your Leg Muscles
Periodically tighten and relax your leg muscles.
Change Position
Avoid remaining completely motionless in the same position for hours.
Get Up and Walk When Appropriate
The CDC advises getting up and walking periodically during long-distance travel, suggesting movement roughly every two to three hours during prolonged sitting when practical.2
Follow airline instructions and remain seated whenever required for safety.
Should You Choose an Aisle Seat?
If you have the choice, an aisle seat may make it easier to get up and move.
The CDC Yellow Book notes that observational evidence suggests aisle seating may be associated with lower VTE risk than window seating, probably because aisle passengers have more freedom to get up and walk.1
This does not mean everyone needs an aisle seat. But if regular movement is important to you, it can make moving around considerably easier.
What About Hydration?
Staying adequately hydrated while traveling is reasonable. But there is an important distinction.
You may have heard: “Drink lots of water on the airplane so you don’t get a blood clot.” Current evidence does not support making that claim.
The CDC Yellow Book states that there is no direct evidence that hydration specifically prevents travel-associated VTE.1
Hydration is still sensible for general health and comfort during travel. It simply should not be presented as a proven blood-clot prevention strategy.
Should You Wear Compression Socks?
This depends on your individual risk.
Graduated compression stockings can reduce asymptomatic DVT in some long-distance travelers, but they are not automatically recommended for everyone.1
For travelers at increased VTE risk, certain professional guidelines recommend properly fitted below-the-knee graduated compression stockings.
If you have risk factors for blood clots, ask your healthcare provider whether compression stockings are appropriate for you and what compression level is appropriate. Do not assume that any pair of tight travel socks provides the same effect.
Should You Take Aspirin Before a Long Flight?
Do not start aspirin solely for travel-related blood-clot prevention without medical guidance.
Current CDC guidance does not recommend routinely taking aspirin to prevent travel-associated blood clots.1,2
Travelers at substantially increased VTE risk may require individualized medical recommendations. That decision belongs with the appropriate healthcare provider.
Who Should Talk to a Healthcare Provider Before a Long Flight?
Consider discussing long-distance travel with your healthcare provider if you have factors such as previous DVT or pulmonary embolism, active cancer, recent surgery or hospitalization, recent significant injury, prolonged immobility, known clotting disorder, significant obesity, estrogen use, or multiple VTE risk factors.1
This conversation should occur before your travel day. Individual recommendations may include strategies beyond general movement.
Know the Warning Signs of a Blood Clot
Even though travel-associated VTE is uncommon in lower-risk travelers, knowing the warning signs is important.
Possible signs of DVT include swelling, usually in one leg, unexplained pain or tenderness, warmth, and redness or discoloration.2
Possible signs of pulmonary embolism include unexplained shortness of breath, chest pain, coughing up blood, and fainting or loss of consciousness.1
Symptoms suggesting a pulmonary embolism require urgent medical attention.
The Flight Is Only the Beginning
Many people spend months planning a vacation but very little time preparing physically for it. Yet the flight may be the easiest part.
After landing, your vacation might require 10,000–20,000 steps per day, stairs, hills, cobblestones, carrying bags, standing in lines, getting on and off buses or trains, and several active days in a row.
That requires more than ankle pumps. It requires strength, endurance, balance, and mobility working together. That is why pre-travel preparation should be based on the demands of the entire trip.
Train for Your Vacation
Think of your vacation as an athletic event. You wouldn’t prepare for a 5K by sitting for several months and hoping race day goes well. Travel deserves the same logic.
Ask yourself: How much walking will I do? Will there be hills? Will there be stairs? Will I carry luggage? Am I playing golf? Will I be standing for long periods? Will I have several demanding days in a row?
Then gradually train your body for those demands.
Key Takeaways
- Long flights involve prolonged sitting followed by a sudden increase in physical activity.
- Preparing several weeks before travel is more useful than performing one workout the night before your flight.
- Ankle pumps and calf exercises can be practiced before travel and used during prolonged sitting.
- Strength exercises such as sit-to-stands and step-ups help prepare for airports, stairs, sightseeing, and everyday travel demands.
- Carrying exercises can help prepare for managing luggage.
- Long-distance travel — commonly defined as more than four hours — can increase VTE risk, particularly when additional risk factors are present.
- During long trips, avoid remaining completely motionless for hours when possible.
- Periodic walking and calf-muscle activity are reasonable strategies during long-distance travel.
- Staying hydrated is reasonable, but hydration has not been proven to specifically prevent travel-associated blood clots.
- Compression stockings are not automatically necessary for every traveler.
- Do not start aspirin or another medication specifically for travel-related blood-clot prevention without appropriate medical guidance.
- If you have significant VTE risk factors, discuss long-distance travel with your healthcare provider.
- The best preparation considers the entire vacation, not just the flight.
Frequently Asked Questions
What exercises should I do before a long flight?
Useful exercises include ankle pumps, heel raises, sit-to-stands, calf raises, hip mobility exercises, step-ups, and loaded carries. Ideally, these should be incorporated into your preparation for several weeks rather than performed only immediately before flying.
Should I exercise during a long flight?
Movement is encouraged during long-distance travel when it is safe to do so. The CDC recommends frequent leg movement, calf exercises, and periodic walking during prolonged travel.1,2
How often should I get up on a long flight?
CDC traveler guidance suggests getting up and walking roughly every two to three hours during prolonged sitting when practical. Always follow crew instructions and remain seated when required for safety.2
Can long flights cause blood clots?
Extended immobility during long-distance travel can increase VTE risk. However, the absolute risk is low for most travelers without additional risk factors, and most travel-associated VTE occurs in people who have one or more preexisting risk factors.1
Does drinking water prevent blood clots on a plane?
There is no direct evidence that hydration specifically prevents travel-associated VTE. Staying adequately hydrated is still reasonable for general health and comfort.1
Should I wear compression socks on a long flight?
Not everyone needs them. They may be appropriate for some travelers with increased VTE risk. Discuss your individual risk and appropriate compression with your healthcare provider.
Should I take aspirin before flying?
Do not start aspirin solely to prevent travel-associated blood clots without medical advice. Routine aspirin use for this purpose is not recommended for most travelers.1,2
Is an aisle seat better on a long flight?
An aisle seat can make it easier to get up and move. Observational evidence cited by the CDC suggests aisle seating may be associated with lower VTE risk than window seating, likely because passengers can move more freely.1
How far in advance should I prepare for a walking-heavy vacation?
The appropriate timeline depends on your current activity level and the demands of your trip. Starting several weeks or more in advance allows walking volume, strength, and endurance to be increased gradually.
What if I have knee, hip, foot, or back pain before my trip?
If pain is limiting your ability to build the walking, strength, or mobility required for your vacation, consider having the problem evaluated before departure rather than waiting until the trip.
Prepare Your Body for Travel in Bonita Springs
At Kriz Mobility and Vitality in Bonita Springs, Florida, our Travel Ready approach begins with a simple question: What will your trip require your body to do?
Maybe you’re preparing for a European vacation, a walking-heavy sightseeing trip, a long international flight, a golf trip, a cruise, or an active family vacation.
We can look at the physical abilities those activities require — including walking endurance, strength, balance, mobility, stairs, carrying, and recovery — and identify areas that may deserve attention before you leave.
The objective isn’t simply to get through the flight. It’s to arrive ready to enjoy the vacation you’ve been planning.
Kriz Mobility and Vitality serves Bonita Springs, Estero, Naples, and surrounding Southwest Florida communities.
Don’t let pain or limited mobility shrink your life — or your vacation.
Move better. Live better. Stay Active for Life.
References
1. Reyes NL, Abe K. Deep Vein Thrombosis and Pulmonary Embolism. In: Halsey ES, Angelo KM, Barnett ED, et al., editors. CDC Yellow Book, 2026 edition: Health Information for International Travel. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US); Published April 23, 2025.
2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Understanding Your Risk for Blood Clots with Travel / Blood Clots During Travel. Travelers’ Health, Venous Thromboembolism (Blood Clots). CDC.gov. Accessed 2026.
3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Air Travel. In: CDC Yellow Book, 2026 edition: Health Information for International Travel. CDC.gov. Accessed 2026.
4. World Health Organization. WHO Guidelines on Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2020.
5. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd edition. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; 2018.
Editorial note: This article is intended for general educational purposes and does not replace individualized medical advice. Anyone with a personal or family history of blood clots, recent surgery, active cancer, or other risk factors for venous thromboembolism should consult their healthcare provider before long-distance travel and before beginning a new exercise program.
