locking in
“Life is full of opportunities to seize the moment and really give it your all.”
--Marcus Aurelius
10.31.2024
Illustration: Sam Woolle
I am ready to play tennis. I am ready to get my ass kicked at a Men’s Open event. I am ready to spend every moment of serve practice focusing on the very precise interchange of spin and pace that occurs as I alter my toss and wrist position upon contact.
This is going to be insufferable, I am not going to have an easy time with this. I am going to be insufferable. Injury prevention, stretching. Being smart. And not an ass.
"When I rise from the bed I start with warm water and lemon, so I can help my body detoxify,” Novak Djokvic tells a journalist in a 2020 interview.
An eager student of the body with a crunchier, shall we call it ‘DIY’ approach to human nutrition that I can’t help but associate with Eastern European men, if you ask him what he eats in a day, Novak Djokovic will begin by listing fluids containing fruits and vegetables.
“Then I would have celery juice on an empty somach. And then I would make a break, and I would have my smoothie: a green smoothie with different algae, and different fruits... superfoods,” he says widening his eyes earnestly with that last word.
There is a lot this stuff you have to pick through when looking at Novak Djokovic’s approach to gastronomy, a lot of, what’s another word for it, ‘New Age’ stuff. In between the Serbian hippy logic however is a vein of nutritional gold that we leave un-mined at our peril.
When it finally does come time to start eating, Djokovic appears to graze like a lemur.
“I eat a lot of fruits for the first part of my day. Salads.” This is the boring realization anyone who looks in here will find: the key to health is fruits and veggies. For athletes particularly, it comes down to un-burdening the digestive system during the day.
“I don’t like to eat any food that would require much energy for digestion, especially in the first part of the day because that’s when I need the most energy for my training.”
I’ve felt the heaviness of a pasta meal, a straight up bad decision meal, in my stomach during training, during play, during exhertion, and let me say that it isn’t fun. I think I have kind of a sensitive stomach too.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the consistency of the food I eat, the softness, the density, how easily it shreds, dissolves, its viscosity and bounce. Eating fruits and veggies does actually make you feel better, and it’s not just nutritionally but also physically, sensually. They sit better in the stomach.
When he sits down for his one solid meal (dinner), Djokovic consumes boiled vegetables like sweet potatoes, seeds (”pseudo-grains”) like quinoa and wild rice.
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"When I rise from the bed I start with warm water and lemon, so I can help my body detoxify.
And then I would have celery juice on an empty somach. And then I would make a break, and I would have my smoothie: green smoothie with different algae, and different fruits, and uhhh ‘superfoods’ *widens eyes like yeah this is important*, great supplements that I use that allow me to have mental clarity, you know, feeling good. Longevity, I guess. And different benefits on health.
I eat a lot of fruits for the first part of my day. Salads.
I don’t like to eat any food that would require much of a... much energy for digestion. Especially in the first part of the day because that’s when I need the most energy for my training.
So I’m keeping things quite light.
And I would probably have pseudo-grains like quinoa millet, wild rice. Sweet potato, normal potato, steamed or boiled.”