A few people have asked about how I stay fit while on I'm on the road, so I'm compiling the lessons I've learned about the way my body functions when I go on tour and what I do to keep it working properly. I need to say right now that everything in this blog post is about what is good for me and what works for me. My adventure with Paw Patrol was my third national tour, and as our show traveled I began to notice some trends that lined up with my other traveling contracts:
- My body changes when I'm on the road
- Hotel English muffins are the best English muffins
- The show itself is only a workout to a certain extent
Pre-Tour Weight Training
I am 0% qualified to give any sort of weight training advice, and that's why I'm keeping this paragraph very brief and vague. The reason I started lifting in the first place was because my acting teacher told me to in 2012. From there I worked out with my friend Nick and picked up bits of his routine. I asked my brother, who is a NASM certified personal trainer, for a few pointers as well, but advice from friends and the internet make up the extent of my knowledge about picking things up and putting them down. Before touring most of my workouts consisted of weight training and running. When it's nice out I'll run to and from my gym at home. It's three miles each way, and having cardio on each end of my lifts is good for me. While I'm at the gym I work in a system of four sets of ten to fifteen reps with dumbbells and machines, using as much weight as I can that allows me to complete these sets. My chest routine consists of benching with dumbbells laying flat/on an incline/on a decline, dumbbell flies, cable flies, and a hundred push ups; my tricep routine consists of dips, overhead extensions, and skull crushers; biceps include dumbbell curls, barbell curls, and chin ups; back includes seated rows, lat pull downs, pull ups, and hyperextensions; shoulders include lateral raises, front raises, and seated dumbbell shoulder presses; abs (four sets of forty reps) include a series of mountain climbers, spider crawls, plank with alternating knee dips, corkscrew, and eight by eight crunch variations (the kind that your dance teacher forces you to do during warm ups.) I occasionally do legs, and this is going to make people roll their eyes, but I run a lot and this is a judgement free blog. I'll occasionally squat because I love to have a booty, but I had hernia surgery less than a year ago, so I'm still a little hesitant to do this.
Rehearsal
I tend to not work out while I'm rehearsing for a show, tour or stationary. The days are packed with physically intense rehearsals, and and extra exercise will run me down down. What I do at work during this time is more than enough to keep my body in shape. I tend to be in new places with different people when I'm working, and this, on top of being very physical for hours at a time, is why I'm a little more indulgent with my carb and added sugar intake. I leave rehearsal sweaty with aching muscles, and I want to get to know my colleagues and the local food. The excitement of new places + new people + all day workout = I'm going to eat what I want after work. My lunch during the work day was usually something light (salad always) and I have a Clif Bar or Rx Bar as a snack.
After two weeks of rehearsal and two weeks of tech, I opened the third leg of PAW Patrol Live! At this point the changes in my body were apparent. The puppet I manipulated was 65lbs. I've been weight training for years, but nothing could have prepared me for the task of jumping and dancing around in a puppy puppet that was more than half my body weight. The way it attached to my body spread the weight from my shoulders to lower back, but the dancing and manipulation required great strength from my quads and hamstrings. At first I thought, "I cannot do this, I am going to die." But then I didn't die. And I did the show one to three times in a day and I was still alive. I had a ballet teacher a few years ago who would always say, "It never gets easier, you just get better," and that 100% applies to my experience dancing in PPL. I was always exhausted after each show, but I somehow managed to dance harder and harder.
The Routine
But like with any show or repetitive physical task, your body gets used to the motions. So this show, while it certainly built up muscle, burnt calories, and originally got me more toned, was becoming a less effective workout. Since my body was accustomed to the exercise from the show I had to find a way to stay toned. This is when I discovered the Nike Training Club app. The app builds a plan based on your fitness goals and regularly assesses your progress. The great part about this program is that you can customize the plan to use the equipment available to you. This was great especially when you are traveling and have no idea what type of gym will be available city to city. I've toured with shows that put us up solely in Red Roofs (no gym), tours that were always close to a Planet Fitness (shout out to my traveling Black Card friends), and on this contract I was lucky enough to have a gym (almost always with a rack of weights) in each hotel. I put my regular lifting schedule on hold when I started NTC to see how just this full body workout/no weights program would affect my body. I noticed differences in my appearance and mood within a few weeks of using the app. I leaned out a bit, which made more of my muscles show though. Thanks, y'all. I didn't want to lose too much of the muscle I had built up before tour and on my first few months of traveling, so I added lifting back into my workout plan on top of my NTC workouts and the show. The app suggests one to two rest days a week. I either lifted on these days or shifted my workout schedule so my "rest" day was a day we had three performances. I didn't feel right not working out for a day. The biggest trick to working out on the road is finding the time. Our schedule was ever changing. We could have three shows one day and a nine hour day of travel the next. But the accountability of having the app helped me find the time.
I love that the Nike Training Club gives me a sense of routine. This is great from a fitness standpoint, because if you don't have an app with a schedule it's easy to phone in a workout or take four rest days in a row (which happens.) And I felt so successful when I made it through to the end of the app's six week program, so much that I did the program again. I began to realized how important a routine was to my mental health on the road. Since we were hitting one to two cities a week, miles from my friends and family, and living out of two bags it was necessary to find some sort of stability outside of performing. Part of this was my workout, and after my workout I would meditate. I was more likely to meditate if it immediately followed something I did. The app I use (Headspace) suggests setting a time each day to meditate. I did this for a while, but since my work hours varied so much it was difficult to keep this commitment. But I knew I would always be working out, so I attached my meditation to my workout and as a result I was able to practice pausing on a daily basis. I mention my meditation practices in this fitness post because I have struggled with anxiety for the last ten years, and I've found that if I feel better inside my head it is much easier for me to work on my body, which in turn makes me feel better inside my head. It's a circle. I highly recommend meditation to everyone, especially for actors and technicians on the road, because ten minutes to pause and do nothing but breathe for ten to fifteen minutes will do wonders when you're work and personal life become one and your privacy becomes zero. I want to mention some other routines I began to build, which helped me workout my mind and work on some new important life skills: pre show juggling, pre sleep Spanish lessons, and breakfast.
Eating
Breakfast was one place I did not think I would find routine, besides the act of eating it every morning. On this tour I started to experiment with the foods I could depend on in the morning to make me feel/perform at my best. A great, structured way to reset your body and discover which foods make you feel good and bad is by doing the Whole 30. I attempted this a few summers ago and it's just too much for me, so I didn't do it on tour. One of the first things I realized on the road is that I used to do anything to avoid drinking water. At the gym back home I would walk by the water fountain and say, "Nah, I'll just drink water when I get home," and then I wouldn't drink water for the rest of the day. I don't know why I didn't like water so much. Maybe it's because water bottles were banned in my high school and I was conditioned to not drink it? I don't know. So on this adventure I made it a goal to have water be the first thing that touches my lips each morning. I would drink water early at the gym or at breakfast. I found that I could get through a morning of rehearsal and performance if I started my day with two English muffins, scrambled eggs, potatoes, and at least two cups of coffee. We stayed in hotels that usually provided these things (sometimes there were no potatoes, sometimes I replaced English muffins with toast) so that made my life very easy. The tricky thing with this breakfast is that you don't know how the eggs and potatoes are made. One morning I ate a bunch of breakfast potatoes that were loaded with oil and wow I felt it during my show and it was not great. One night I got empanadas (treat yourself) and I felt it the next day during my workout. This is when I ruled anything oily out of my diet: no fries, pizza, burgers, etc. I didn't really eat these to begin with, but now they were extra outlawed. I discovered that my body had a similar reaction with beans, hummus, peanut butter, and any time I ate more than a few almonds. These are all healthier foods and contain fats that humans need, but I don't feel good after eating them, so goodbye. I love a good protein bar/cookie/shake, but I noticed that they bloated me. I've stuck to Clif Bars and Rx bars since this. I gave up coffee for a few weeks because I was whiting my teeth for the family Christmas parties. My head killed me after the first two days, but then I was ok. My shows didn't really suffer from lack of coffee, but the drink does fill me, so I found myself craving more food than usual. I'm back on coffee now and my teeth are fine.
Drinking
I stopped drinking for a period of time when I was on tour. There are so many reasons to drink daily when you're on the road: you're at a cast gathering, everyone's going to a club, you miss your ex, there are forty six brewing companies in each new city, the hotel offers a free reception with house wine. I went from rarely drinking to daily drinking very quickly, and I bloated up. I cut back to one or two nights a week, but even then I wasn't in the shape I'd like to be, and I didn't feel great, so I cut it all together. The difference was huge and the results of this came quick. This meant that I wasn't drinking at cast outings. I tried not to tell anyone, but you can only pretend that your club soda has vodka in it for so long before people get suspicious. I started to be open about not drinking, and not everyone was receptive to it. This is an important lesson in making your own decisions and deciding what is right for you.
Being Delicious
I've written a lot about working out and all the things I can't eat, so here in the last paragraph I'm going to talk about living deliciously. I had a number of dietary restrictions, but I still let myself experience a slew of new flavors on tour because I made exceptions once in a while. Whenever I looked at a menu I asked myself, “Can I consume this thing anywhere else?” (this can apply to experiences, too.) Most of the time I would eat salad for lunch and dinner because I knew it wouldn't bloat me but also because it left room for me to snack on something really extraordinary later. If something was delicious and I knew I wasn't going to get anything like it anywhere else I had to get it. Because that's what tour is about (also it's about children seeing Paw Patrol live.) When ever we went to a new place I looked for a local candy store that sold pralines because I love pralines and I want to taste every recipe. We went to Magnolia Market in Waco and the cupcakes looked so wonderful it was just a question of which one I would buy. When we went to New Orleans I had to get a Hand Grenade and Fish Bowl and Cafe Du Monde beignet because that's what you do in New Orleans. And I enjoyed all of these things so much. So what I'm saying is, I indulged in the unique things, but made a habit of filling up on the things that I knew were the best for my body.
In summary:
- Do the Nike Training Club
- Lift
- Meditate
- Drink water instead
- Eat a good breakfast
- Indulge in the one of a kind
