This week, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, along with dual-board certified MD Paul Saladino, the “Make Travel Family Friendly Again” campaign at Washington’s Reagan National Airport. The three pull-ups performed at Terminal 2 quickly went viral, sparking the public’s curiosity about what fitness in transit could look like.
The $1 billion initiative aims to modernize airports with improved children’s play areas, additional nursing pods and special exercise areas “where people can get some blood flowing by doing some pull-ups or step-ups,” as Minister Duffy said at a press conference.
We spoke with Saladino to see what he thinks it would take to get people moving in one of the country’s most sedentary environments. He told it Muscle & Fitness that a short ‘micro-workout’ of as long as five minutes between flights can be a useful lever for reducing inflammation, improving cardiovascular health and even mental performance.
From an IG post to Federal Funding
The seed was planted a few months ago when Saladino posted on his Instagram about the lack of exercise options at airports. He didn’t expect it to reach Washington. It was sec. Duffy’s 17-year-old daughter, Paloma, who showed the post to his father, and who also joined them at the press conference and casually knocked out 13 pullups on camera.
“When Secretary Duffy called, I was a little weak,” he said. “I thought it was so cool that the Secretary of Transportation saw one of the pieces of content I created. I was really excited because it’s something that I think a lot of people could benefit from. It’s really forward thinking on his part.”
What a mini airport gym could look like
If you imagine a full commercial gym being built next to Gate B12, think smaller and more inclusive. The key elements of the ‘1.0 vision’ that Saladino had in mind are deliberately compact, low-risk and free.
“What we have as a prototype now is three to four hundred and five hundred square meters of floor space,” he says. “Some of it has a pull-up bar and a dip bar, some of it has parallettes. We want to have some step-up boxes. We want the gym to be inclusive, so I want to put in a vibration plate, slanted planks for calf lifts, and some kind of exercise area with yoga mats and just places for people to stretch.”
Saladino also emphasized that these spaces were not designed as full training facilities. Equipment such as heavy dumbbells and kettlebells are intentionally left out to reduce the risk of injury and make the environment accessible to all fitness levels.
He also recognizes that sweating is the last thing people want to have to deal with at airports, so it’s crucial to keep it short. “The idea is micro-workouts. My hunch is that more than 80 percent of these gyms’ use cases are workouts of 10 minutes or less,” he admits, suggesting that just four 20-second intervals on an air bike won’t make you sweaty at all, but will still deliver major benefits to your cardiovascular system.
The Science: Why Two to Five Minutes Still Matter
For Saladino, the mini-gyms are an attack on the way modern travel exacerbates the worst aspects of a sedentary lifestyle.
“Even sitting for an hour leads to vascular dysfunction,” he explains. When muscles are inactive, they stop releasing myokines, which are anti-inflammatory signaling molecules produced by contracting muscles. “After two to three hours, which is the average length of a flight, you see people’s inflammatory markers rising,” he says.
Short breaks while sitting can counteract this faster than most people think. “You don’t have to do much,” says Saladino. “Even a little bit can interrupt the inflammatory process that occurs when you are sedentary.”
For example, ten to twenty step-ups on a box. One minute calf raise on an inclined plate. Two to four sprints of 20-30 seconds on an air bike. A few sets of push-ups or air squats.
When we asked him about the minimum effective dose, he said it depends on the intensity, but it can be as little as two to three minutes. “If you get on the echo bike and do four sets of 30 seconds at high intensity, that means three and a half minutes of rest training. And that changes your physiology in a meaningful way.”
The goal is not weight loss
Saladino wants people to reconsider why they’re moving in the first place.
“Most Americans think about exercising to lose weight,” he says. “That’s the wrong way to think about it. You exercise because it’s good for your blood vessels, it stops the inflammation process and it benefits your brain,” he says, pointing to BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor and myokines.
He argues that meaningful weight change comes more from improving food quality than from trying to beat calories at the airport. That’s why, in addition to the mini gyms, he also shared a lesser-known travel strategy. “TSA allows a special third food bag on flights,” he says, suggesting packing real foods like fruit, proteins like his favorite Lineage beef sticks, and minimally processed options so you don’t have to rely on overpriced, ultra-processed airport choices.
What should be done next
The funding has been approved by Congress, but these mini gyms won’t come to life until the airports take action. That, Saladino says, is where the public, and especially the fitness community, comes into the picture.
“What Secretary Duffy wants is for people to talk to their airports or tag their local airport on X and tag him,” Saladino said, adding that the Department of Transportation will then work directly with interested airports on design and implementation.
Sitting for hours on end doesn’t have to be the standard cost of modern travel. Small spaces, simple tools and a few minutes of honest effort can turn a stopover into something that supports long-term health rather than erodes it.
“Let’s refocus on the idea that being sedentary is bad for humans,” says Saladino. “We can correct this quickly and easily with small meaningful movements.”
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