One of the best and worst parts of being an athlete is the travel. On one hand, you get to see amazing places and your passion can take you all over the world. However, on the other hand living out of a gear bag and trying to eat right and stay in optimal health can be a massive struggle. This does not just apply to athletes though, plenty of people all over the world travel for work and often the first thing to suffer is nutrition. This is because choices become limited and the ability to prepare your own food is often non-existent. A few weeks ago, I talked about understanding the basics of nutrition, which is the key to selecting the right option when your choices are limited.

Over my FMX career, the majority of my time spent abroad was in Asia, and to be honest this is probably one of the easiest parts of the world to eat well, as long as you don’t mind trying new things. The traditional dishes are all made from fresh ingredients, meat, vegetables and spices. Simple, tasty and nutritious.

The struggle comes when athletes try to go for familiar fast food options. More times than I can count, I have had team mates hugging the toilet bowel because they ate westernised food in a non western country. In this instance, it is always good to be prepared by making sure your gut health is in optimal condition by taking a high quality probiotic supplement to make sure that if you do get any nasty bacteria enter your system, you at least have a fighting chance to cut it off at the chase.

Let’s look at more familiar lands now. When touring at home it is a lot easier now to eat well on the road than it was 10 or even 5 years ago. One of the big advantages of the current health movement is that the fast food giants have reacted and begun supplying much better options. In Australia almost every major town has a McDonalds and for all the bad press they have received its actually not as bad as you might think, as long as you make the right choices. This is the key, the RIGHT choices. The problem with all these sort of places is the sugary buns, fried foods, soft drinks, and the deserts. Many of these places now have bun-less or low carb bun options and all of them sell bottled water.

My personal favourites are places like Red Rooster, or any local take away shop really, half a chicken, a cup of peas, and maybe some potato with a bottle of water. It might not be optimal but it is simple, cheap, quick and almost always an option in any town. Even most service station and roadhouses have BBQ chicken available.

Key points

• Try to eat whole foods (meat, veggies, salad etc)
• Avoid processed pre-packaged foods
• Avoid fried foods
• Choose to drink water over soft drinks
• Don’t always take the first option, there is likely a better option just around the corner
• Choose wisely at fast food outlets
• Don’t be scared to try new things, you might like it!

These tips are great when on the road but are not an everyday thing. Like I tell my athletes, optimal health starts with nutrition and if you aren’t looking after your body in the right ways then it won’t perform the way you want or need it to. Take the next step right now and head over to my contact page to tell me what you want to achieve for 2016.

Train hard and be safe.

Your strength coach,

Cam