UrbanUpdate

We are not being ironic when we say that professional wrestlers are some of the world’s fittest athletes. They could crush an awful lot of ballplayers. So how exactly do they stay in such great shape when they’re traveling 300-plus days a year, while dodging suplexes and power bombs at night? We asked five of the WWE’s biggest stars—including current heavyweight champ Seth Rollins—to find out. Spoiler alert: It involves a lot of Chipotle.

How difficult is it for you guys to find gyms to work out in when you’re essentially in a different city every night?

Charlotte: Every single town I get to, the first thing I do is Google a gym. And that’s just part of your life on the road. It’s like, “I have to eat breakfast. I have to work out.”

Roman Reigns: Finding gyms are the easiest part. Nowadays you plug your iPhone in and you can pretty much figure out anything.

Kofi Kingston: We can just type in a Gold’s Gym or LA Fitness or whatever.

Cesaro: I’m pretty lucky because I travel with Seth. The CrossFit community has been really, really good to us. They just open their gyms to us and we can go and workout there.

Seth Rollins: Sometimes if you go to the same gyms, the fans catch on to that and they start hanging out at the gyms. It becomes a little bit of a circus. Over the course of three years or so, I’ve been able to create a nice little Rolodex of CrossFit gyms. I’ve ingratiated myself to the community, and that allows for a much more accessible training session as far as privacy is concerned.

Roman: I think the hardest part is actually nutrition. And not just what you eat, but eating enough.

Do you have any secrets or tips to maintaining a diet when you’re constantly traveling?

Seth: I’m a huge proponent of eating real food and eating a lot if it. As athletes, we train and travel so much, a lot of times our needs are not met calorically. But I don’t like eating to be a chore, so I kind of just go with the flow. I don’t like to plan my meals ahead of time. I feel like as soon as it becomes a chore and you start thinking of it as a diet instead of a lifestyle, that’s when you start to want to cheat more and more. You get real sloppy real quick.

Roman: Big E Langston—he’s probably one of our strongest guys—he was on this thing he called “sugar window.” So if you work out hard enough, you can literally eat anything you want right after a workout. He’s like, you can eat cookies and ice cream and chocolate syrup and your body is going to use it in a proper way. And if you look at him, he’s a genetic freak. So we’d work out and then make a sprint to the building to hit up catering for a cookie or two. It wasn’t more than a week or two until we were like, “Maybe there isn’t too much science behind this thing.” Plus, I think Big E made it a “sugar garage door.”

Charlotte: I’m the type of person who has to preplan every meal, because I love food and nothing is worse than being hungry. I really try to stay away from protein bars because I love them. I could literally eat four Quest bars at one time. So say I’m on a loop from Friday to Wednesday—if I fly out on Friday morning, I’ll have all my meals prepped in my lunch box for that day. I always try to travel with tuna packets, oatmeal, nuts, peanut butter, and rice cakes. Then once I land, I’ll look up whatever grocery store they have around and I’ll buy food for Saturday and Sunday. Maybe I can pick up some apples, avocados, spinach, turkey, sliced chicken. I’ll do that right when I get in.

Is there a certain place you rely on for food when you’re on the road?

Kofi: Chipotle.

Charlotte: Or Moe’s. But only if you can’t find a Chipotle first. [laughs]

Seth: Yeah, Chipotle’s the universal one. They’re pretty much everywhere. It’s fresh ingredients. It’s quality. Now everything they have is non-GMO. If you can just get a bowl with a bunch of meat and vegetables and rice, you’re pretty set.

Roman: It’s just simple and delicious. I’ll do anywhere from two to three scoops of chicken, and then sometimes the barbacoa if the time’s right.

Cesaro: I go and get three bowls to go, and then I have my protein shake after my workouts. That’s pretty much my road diet. [laughs] I usually get brown rice and black beans. I’ll do one bowl with double chicken, one with double steak, and one with chicken and steak. It’s fresh, it’s fast, and it’s reliable.

Kofi: Anytime we can hit a Chipotle, we always stop.

You all train incredibly hard, beat yourselves up in the ring, and then you have to hop in a rental car and drive to the next city to do it all over again. How do you keep your body from falling apart?

Seth: That’s impossible, basically. The recovery is impossible. We do the best that we can, but our season doesn’t end. For the past three years, I haven’t had any extended period of time at home. The longest stretch I’ve had at home is four days in three years. And that’s legit.

Roman: The recovery process is a myth. I don’t think there is such a thing.

Cesaro: What I try to do is get a good rental car. Something that is big and comfortable that has space so I can stretch out, even when I’m driving.

Kofi: It’s funny, because you see us in the ring and we’re taking all these bumps and we’re being thrown around, and you’ll see me jump from the top rope to the outside of the ring. But what wears on the body is the travel. Like, we just flew to Victoria all the way from Florida. Those seats go back like 53 degrees! So you’re sitting in an awkward position, your legs are numb and your lower back is hurting, and then once you land you have to get in a car and drive for two or three more hours. So that is really what takes the most toll on my body.

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Charlotte: Sleep is so important. And you’ll laugh at me, but I always have a jug of water with me. Sleep and hydrating I think are the most important things.

A lot of people swear by supplements to help with recovery, but traveling with that stuff can be difficult.

Roman: Those big old protein tubs are a pain in the ass. It’s happened to Seth before where one just busted open. We were sitting in the rental car parking lot about to pick up the car, and he’s just dumping out his whole checked bag, chocolate protein powder going everywhere. It was terrible.

Cesaro: Actually, one of my protein bags just kind of exploded in my bag.

Kofi: If anyone has ever had protein powder spill in their bag, you only let that happen to you one time. You have to double bag it. Plus traveling with the actual tubs of protein takes up so much unnecessary space.

Charlotte: I’ll take my protein powder and put it in a little Ziploc baggie. So like, six Ziploc bags with a scoop of protein powder in each. And then I’ll stuff it in my actual shaker bottle.

Seth: My protein comes in bags now, which is nice. As you use them, they get smaller and smaller. So I’ll fold the bag and roll it under, and then I wrap a rubber band around it so it stays closed. Then I will put the bag inside of a Ziploc bag, so that shit ain’t going nowhere.

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