Nutrition is one of several significant factors that can affect your performance as an athlete. Optimal performance also relies on good training, good health, and proper rest.
Nutrition for sports performance includes these components:
*
fluid intake and hydration
*
energy substrates (carbohydrate, protein and fat)
*
vitamin and mineral balance
*
pre-game and recovery meals
*
nutrition for endurance sports
Additional nutrition topics of importance for athletes include:
* body weight management and body composition
* effect of alcohol intake on performance
* supplementation
* eating problems
* long-term health
A flier entitled “Nutrition and Sports Performance” can get you started on these topics and can be obtained from Gannett Health Promotion (Level 3) .
The Center for Nutrition in Sport and Human Performance has a great deal of useful information for athletes. Check out their online newsletter.
Eat a Balanced Diet Each Day
To exercise consistently, you need to provide a good supply of high-quality energy to your working muscles. The easiest way to to this is to eat a balanced breakfast and continue eating a variety of high-quality foods throughout the day.
Carbohydrate in the form of glycogen is the fuel that makes exercise possible, so adequate carbs must be eaten each day if you hope to train consistently. Protein and fat also have a place in your diet and should be consumed daily. In general, each meal should contain a varied combination of carbohydrates, protein and fat.
If you aren't sure if you are getting the proper nutrients in your daily diet, check out Calorie Count to create a profile and analyze your diet.
Several Hours Before You Workout
The pre-exercise meal will vary depending upon your exercise style. If you workout in the evening, lunch should include easily digestible foods high in complex carbohydrates, such as pasta, breads, fruits and vegetables. A big salad with a small amount of protein works well. Select a small amount of lean meat such as chicken or fish, and experiment with what works best for you.
If you exercise first thing in the morning, you'll probably feel best if you eat a light breakfast of fruit, toast, or an egg. Again, everyone is different, so experiment with what works best for you. Regardless of what you choice to eat, you should drink plenty of water before and during a morning workout.
Thirty Minutes Before You Workout
Depending upon the type and duration of workout you do, you'll want to eat a small snack and drink some water a half hour before you get going. Trail mix is great for aerobic workouts over 60 or 90 minutes, but if you are going hard for thirty minutes, you probably only need a half of an energy or granola bar, a large banana, a few graham crackers, fig bars, or pretzels. For a shorter workout, you may not want to eat anything at all, but can get a few calories from drinking about 8-10 ounces of a sport drink.
You should also start drinking water before your workout so you've consumed about 6-12 ounces in the the hour before your workout.
During Your Workout
Proper hydration during exercise depends upon the intensity and duration of exercise, the fitness of the athlete, and weather conditions. In order to simplify the recommendations, a good starting point is to drink 8-10 fl oz of water every 15 min during exercise.
If exercising longer than 90 minutes, drink 8-10 fl oz of a sports drink every 15 - 30 minutes. Exercising for more than about 90 minutes usually requires that you replenish lost carbohydrates.
If your workout is less than an hour, odds are you don't need to consume anything extra.
Hydration After Your Workout
After your workout, drink enough water to replace water lost through sweat. The best way to determine this is by weighing yourself before and after exercise. For every pound of body weight lost, you'll need to consume about 3 cups of fluid.
Another way to determine how much liquid to consume is to check the color of your urine. Dark, concentrated urine may indicate dehydration. Your urine should be relatively clear in color.
Eating After Your Workout
The post-exercise meal should be eaten within two hours of a long or intense workout in order to replenish glycogen stores for continued exercise. While research shows eating 100-200 grams of carbohydrate within two hours of endurance exercise is essential to building adequate glycogen stores, eating a combination of both carbohydrate and protein seems to be an even better option. Studies have found that a 4:1 ratio of carbohydrate to protein seems to the ideal combination of nutrition. And although solid foods can work just as well as a sports drink, a drink may be easier to digest make it easier to get the right ratio and meet the 2-hour window.
Can you give me some tips on pre and post workout nutrition?
Thanks
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'Admin\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\' pid=\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'14\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\' dateline=\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'1260302065\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Wrote:Nutrition is one of several significant factors that can affect your performance as an athlete. Optimal performance also relies on good training, good health, and proper rest.
Nutrition for sports performance includes these components:
*
fluid intake and hydration
*
energy substrates (carbohydrate, protein and fat)
*
vitamin and mineral balance
*
pre-game and recovery meals
*
nutrition for endurance sports
Additional nutrition topics of importance for athletes include:
* body weight management and body composition
* effect of alcohol intake on performance
* supplementation
* eating problems
* long-term health
A flier entitled “Nutrition and Sports Performance” can get you started on these topics and can be obtained from Gannett Health Promotion (Level 3) .
The Center for Nutrition in Sport and Human Performance has a great deal of useful information for athletes. Check out their online newsletter.
That is a great information for athletes. Eating disorders may affect the performance of any people. Athletes are more health prone than others. Energy drinks are best supplements for athlete.For more health related information i am following this
fitness health resource.I hope it will also help you.
Me too agree with Calvin. Regular intake of hygienic food and nutrition source gives better help in performance. The most important thing is to avoid inorganic food, its better to have organic food instead. Food like rice, potatoes, green beans, strawberries are organic food and are good for health too.
This is great information. Sports nutrition has become a big subject with all the high school and college students that have died during practice, manly form dehydration. We need to do a better job with the coaches and athletic trainers showing giving them the tools to help the students. We need to be teaching the students and parents about how important it is to eat good and drink a lot of water when they are playing.
Nice one friend. This post is really helpful for athletes.
Good tips, but there definitely is a difference between different sports - endurance sports or dynamic type of sports, since there is different body structure among different types of athletes. as an example try to compare sumo and Olympic marathon, they really need to eat differently.
Sports and nutrition are directly related to each other. Sports persons need more energy to carry out for their sporting activity effectively, it becomes of prime importance to take care of the nutrition for sports performance.
This is a very informative and helpful thread. Thanks to the Admin and jhnsmth for sharing the facts. I feel that fruit juices, specially mixed fruit juices are very good sources of nutrition, and including 200ml of juice in everyday diet will add to the sports nutrition.