Taking care of yourself

This section deals with how you take care of yourself as an athlete before a tournament. Even if you’ve traveled overseas extensively before it’s a good idea to read through this section. It contains important details of how to handle the stress traveling puts on your body so that you’re ready as quickly as possible to compete.

Sleep

This is probably the most difficult one to get right. Being well rested is incredibly important for you to perform at your best. It isn’t always that easy though. A typical travel schedule will have you leave two evenings before your event and arrive the middle of the following day. Due to this, you spend an entire night traveling. You MUST sleep on the flight, or you’re missing an entire night of sleep.

Flights to Europe are weird. Most tournaments you’ll travel to will have about 6-8 hour flights. Not enough time to sleep properly (unless you’re lucky, unlike me, and can sleep the instant you board the plane). You’ll get to your destination with around 4-6 hours of restless sleep after your traveling is done.

When you finally arrive at your destination, you’ll get the urge to sleep. Especially around mid-afternoon, when it starts to be bedtime back home. You must resist this urge to sleep when you get in. I recommend not napping at all unless you are very good at waking up. Most of the time, it’s way too hard to get up after only 45 minutes in a real bed after a night of restless airplane sleep. If you sleep more than this, you will are much more likely to have difficulty sleeping when go to bed in the evening (even though you are really tired already). When you start to feel that urge to sleep in the afternoon, it’s good to get out of the hotel. Both moving and sunlight can help your body better handle jet lag. If you have the ability to do so, it can also be helpful to do a little light exercise (like a jog) or go for a brief swim to help your body readjust.

If you stay up to a reasonable hour (~10pm local time), you should be able to get to sleep that night due to exhaustion, despite the fact that your body thinks it should be time to get up. It’s also quite natural to wake up early in the morning because your body is a bit out of sorts. I used to stress out about this because I felt that I wasn’t getting enough sleep. The key is not to panic. One night of less than perfect sleep isn’t going to kill, so just try to use the time to relax, read or listen to music.

Activity

Sitting for long periods of time, especially in uncomfortable plane seating, can be really bad for your blood circulation. Getting a pair of compression socks can help. These are socks that are tighter than regular socks and generally go up to right below your knees and apply a consistent pressure to your legs which which helps the blood move around.

While on the flight, in the hours you aren’t sleeping, you should try to get up every hour to stretch your legs. Usually there is a little space by the lavatory where you can move your body and do some light stretches. This can make a big difference to how you feel when you get to the other side.

As mentioned above getting out and about, moving around or doing a little light exercise or stretching on the day you arrive can also help you feel much more ready to perform the next day at the competition.

Food

You need to eat. I cannot stress this enough. It’s surprisingly easy for you to go to a tournament and not eat enough. This is the single biggest difference I made that I found helped my performance after I started traveling. Your eating cycle will be thrown off by the time zone and changes to your sleep cycle. Eating at the right times for your new time zone will also help adjust your body (and thus help you sleep), so it works on multiple levels.

You will also be pretty tired and stressed, which can contribute to making you feel less hungry than you typically do.

It will also be slightly more difficult to obtain food than you’re used to. The language barrier and lack of familiarity with the city can make finding quality food difficult. In these instances try to resist the urge to simply eat at fast food restaurants while abroad. It’s tempting to go to a Mcdonald’s simply because you recognize the brand and know what you are going to get. However, fast food and elite athletic performance do not make good bedfellows. Spend the extra effort to ask around or speak to the hotel to find a place when you can get higher quality food.

Having snacks on hand can help you prevent making bad food choices as well keep your blood sugar up while competing. So, I’d suggest making sure you have a least a few granola bars, bags of nuts, or whatever else you like to eat. You can also wait to buy them at your destination however, you will have difficulty finding exactly what you’re looking for or you will be too cranky or tired to make the extra effort of finding a grocery store.

A small note about eating during the tournament: By now, you’ll probably know what and how much you like to eat during a competition. You can stick generally to this, although I find the days tend to run a little longer at international tournaments ,and I have to eat a little more than I’m used to at a NAC.

Water

Staying hydrated is another big challenge for international travel. You need to be hydrated to perform at your best. Unfortunately, you have a variety of things working against you, and so it’s important to pay extra attention when traveling overseas.

Planes will dehydrate you. Make sure you’re drinking a lot of water during the flight. I try to drink about 1.5 liters of water (three small water bottles) during a 6-8 hour flight. You should not count on flight attendants to give you water. They will, of course, but usually only in small cups which makes drinking enough water difficult. The best way to bring water with you is to take a refillable bottle and fill it up at a water fountain at an American airport (more on international water below). Or you can also just buy water at the airport.

You’ll also want to pick up water bottles at the local convenience store once you arrive. Some tournaments will be able to sell you water, but not all of them, so it’s good to be prepared with enough water for the day. The front desk at your hotel will be able to point out where you can go.

Some fencers like drinking sports drinks like Gatorade at tournaments. If this is you, pack the powder packets and mix them with water you acquire at your destination. This is by far the easiest way to have these drinks, as you’ll often not be able to acquire them once you get there.

Special note: I have heard mixed reports on whether you should drink the water traveling overseas. It is safe to drink the water in most countries you will travel to (always check before you travel either way), but depending on your tolerance, it may upset your stomach (I believe this is due to differences in the microbiome and makeup of the water). It could still be fine for you, however: some people drink tap water the entire time no problem, and some people have issues if they even brush their teeth without bottled water.

My advice is for your first tournament, don’t take any chances. Drink bottled water for the duration of your stay. If you’d like to know for the future, test drinking some of the tap water after you’re done fencing.

Keep in mind your sensitivity will vary. If you are really worried, it’s best to avoid traces of tap water. Order drinks without ice, use bottled water to brush your teeth and avoid fresh fruits and vegetables which might have been washed in local water your first time through. Better to be a little inconvenienced than have stomach troubles on competition day. You’ll test how much you can handle after the tournament (most people have no problem with the small amounts of water in ice, fruit, and brushing their teeth), so you’ll only have to go through this once.

Communicating with foreigners

This is more of a note than a full section. I have had many first-time overseas travellers who approach me and were worried about communicating without speaking the language. The long and short of it is do not worry. Most people you encounter will be able to speak some English. This is especially true where you’ll be frequenting, such as hotels, airports, and restaurants. You can also get the Google Translate App, which allows you to download many foreign language dictionaries (so you don’t have to rely on wireless data), translate text using the camera (e.g. menus), and or translate out loud english text that you enter into the app.

One more quick note: While it’s beneficial to speak in simple English, do not resort to speaking in broken English. For some bizarre reason, it’s really tempting to mimic bad english back at the speaker because you think they might better understand language spoken to them in the way they speak. It’s not. So you are better off saying “May I have some pasta?” than “ME. WANT. PASTA.” Most foreigners you meet will have taken English classes in school, so correct grammar will be how they’re used to hearing it and will actually help most of the time. If they have trouble understanding you, just repeat what you said, start using gestures, or worst case break out the Google Translate App.