An 11 day trip to Europe, followed by an extended weekend at an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica, two weddings, a three day business trip to Washington, D.C. and potentially another business trip to Las Vegas the week before my first show. It looks like I will be facing a lot of adversity in the weeks leading up to my very first competition.
Just the thought of flying overseas for 11 days in the middle of preparing for a contest caused quite some stress in the previous weeks and raised several questions before the trip.
Would I be able to stick to my diet? Where would I work out? What supplements should I take with me and which ones should I simply buy when I was there? How could I ensure that I would be eating good food every 2 hours while sitting in an airport or on a plane? And so on, and so on.
Well, now that I am back from my "little" excursion to Germany, I can tell you that I found answers to all of these "earth-shattering" questions and am glad to announce that I was able to stick to my workout and diet regiment almost 100%.
As with every trip, planning ahead was everything. Since this would be my first transatlantic flight on a strict diet, I researched the web to see if and what kind of foods I would be able to bring on the plane to ensure that I could eat every two hours, even at 35,000ft above the Atlantic ocean.
 |
| TSA approved diet |
Once I arrived in Germany, one of my very first stops lead me to my friend Pasquale, who owns a fitness and supplement store (Fitnessworld24.net). Thanks to his expert advice and great assortment in his store, I was able to get sugar/carb free whey isolate protein and casein at a good price and was set for the week in regards of supplements.
With my supplements taken care of, it was time to organize "real" food. At the local supermarket I was slightly shocked when I converted the price of chicken into US dollars. $5.90 for a pound of chicken breast. Guess the price of chicken and gas prices must be highly correlated. Since I did not want to blow my entire budget on some chicken breasts, I opted to get some Alaskan Pollock in addition to 3 pounds of chicken as my primary source of protein. Due to the bones and "taste" this turned out to be a bad decision and after two days of "fishy, fishy" I went to another supermarket and bought a couple of pounds of chicken at a more reasonable price. Besides my protein, I also had to get my carbohydrates, in form of, big surprise here, brown rice and dry oats, as well as some vegetables. Storage space in the average German home is usually smaller than in the US and so is the typical German refrigerator. The results is that foods are packed in much smaller packages and I had to walk out of the store with several tiny cartons of oats and rice instead of just one large size container. Man, how I missed my Costco that day.
 |
| Successful shopping trip: Fish, chicken, brown rice, dry oats and broccoli. |
To ensure that my meals and portion sizes remain the same, I converted my meal plan into metric and even packed a set of American measurement cups.
Once foods and supplements were checked off my to-do-list, my next problem was finding a suitable gym. The gym I used to go to before moving to the States unfortunately went belly up last year, so I had to find a new "home away from home". After talking to friends back in Germany and doing some research on the web I narrowed it down to a couple of places I wanted to check out and try to get a weekly membership. Again it was my friend Pasquale who helped me out tremendously by recommending me his current gym. His place was not on my initial list, but I decided to give it a shot anyways.
Clever Fit is a chain of fitness clubs in Germany and caters to the average Joe. The facility was very clean and the equipment, consisting of Life Fitness machines, racks, treadmills and ellipticals, was state-of-the-art. The staff was very friendly and helpful, but unfortunately the number of free weights was very limited and it lacked decent leg presses. However the gym had great hours (M-F 6am-Midnight, S&S 9am-10pm) and I was allowed to do a one week "free trial", so no complaints.
 |
| Clever Fit Fellbach, Germany |
Another gym on my list to try out was the Fitnessclub Fellbach. Coincidentally a friend of mine just took over the general manager position at this place so I figured I would take a look at it and see if it had the necessary equipment to get a solid back and leg workout in. It surely did. The place had anything a serious lifter or bodybuilder could ask for. Various leg presses, power rack, squat rack, machines, dumbbells up to 140 lbs. and a good amount of free weights. From an equipment point-of-view it was exactly what I was looking for, however the hours were not very accommodating for a early riser like me (M-F 9am-11pm, Sat 10am-7pm and Sun 10am-5pm) and the atmosphere was somewhat sterile. The old machines and colors gave the place a slight retro look and it felt like a time travel back to the 1990's.
 |
| Fitnessclub Fellbach, Germany |
 |
| Fitnessclub Fellbach: Back to the future, welcome to 1990. |
German food, pastries, candy, chocolate and baked goods are in my opinion some of the world's best and the things I miss the most in the States. Walking by a bakery and smelling the fresh bread, seeing all the delicious cakes, freshly prepared rolls and pastries was mere torture. Looking at the plates of my relatives loaded with Spätzle, dumplings, gravy, roasts, Schnitzel, filet, sausages and salads at family functions and then just "digging" in my steamed broccoli, cauliflower and grilled chicken required tons of self-discipline and will hopefully pay off when I finally hit the stage in June.
 |
| German Bakery: Homemade pralines, cakes and other confectioneries |
 |
| Chocolate Store |
„Grüße aus Deutschland“!
No comments:
Post a Comment