Winning With Nutrition

Why nutrient intake impacts performance

Where once our focus was solely on ensuring sufficient muscle fuel stores, it is now accepted that what we eat before, during and after every single training session has the capacity to drastically alter our whole-body physiology, affecting tissues and organs over and above that of skeletal muscle.

For example, the timing, type and quantity of both macronutrients (i.e. carbohydrate, fats and proteins) and micronutrients (i.e. vitamins and minerals), alongside total body water content (i.e. hydration status), can all affect the daily function of our brains, gut, kidney, liver, immune system, bones, tendons, ligaments and so on. When considered this way, the importance of nutrition extends far beyond that of body composition or fuelling for game day. Rather, our daily nutrient intake affects our ability to make decisions, execute physical actions and technical skills, withstand mechanical load, fight infection, maintain training volume, promote sleep, reduce injury risk and so on.

From a human performance perspective, a poorly fuelled athlete is therefore likely to suffer from poor sleep quality, exhibit increased incidence of injury and illness and display impaired growth, maturation and recovery, all of which can manifest in your star player apparently suffering from a lack of responsiveness to training and a loss of form. It is through this lens that it is no exaggeration to say that positive transformations in athletes’ careers and longevity within their sport is achieved once they have embraced the principles of a performance approach to nutrition.

Below are our top 5 tips and principalities to win with nutrition:

1.       Have a (periodised) plan

The classical training principles of overload, specificity and periodisation is the basis of training programmes across all sports. Every session is done for a reason, to develop the athlete’s physical, technical and/ or tactical capacity to deal with the demands of competition. Performance coaches carefully plan, monitor, and adjust each athlete’s training load across the micro, meso and macro-cycles.

One of the most significant developments in the science of performance nutrition during the last decade is the concept of ‘nutritional periodisation’. That is, adapting the timing, type and quantity of nutrients ingested to align with the goals of the specific training session or competitive schedule. Having no plan at all is already one step closer to failure. Therefore, planning your nutrition in advance is a step towards fuelling a winning performance.

The nutritional plan should, of course, be tailored to each athlete’s individualised goals so that it ultimately allows for development of peak performance at the right time. In team sports, the principle of nutritional periodisation is perhaps most obvious across the weekly micro-cycle where daily carbohydrates are now regularly adjusted to the demands of the training session, a practice that is often communicated according to the principle of ‘fuelling for the work required’.

It is important to recognise, however, that nutritional periodisation extends far beyond that of daily carbohydrate intake. Rather, the ingestion of other macronutrients (e.g. protein), micronutrients (e.g. vitamin D, calcium, iron etc) and ergogenic aids and supplements (e.g. caffeine, creatine, beta alanine, probiotics etc) should all be carefully implemented according to when the desired benefit truly needs to be delivered. A question you need to ask yourself; is the nutritional plan is truly aligned to what you are trying to achieve?

2.       Find your optimal body composition

Both coaches and athletes can become obsessive with body composition, the latter often pushing their body to extremes to find that extra performance benefit that can arise from being lighter or heavier. The presence of under-fuelling and the associated negative physiological outcomes is now recognised clinically as the condition of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S). In such circumstances, chronically under fuelling can play havoc with bone health, suppress metabolic rate, impair menstrual function and lead to reductions in muscle mass – all of which leads to impaired health and performance. The quest to ‘be lighter’ is especially prevalent amongst endurance and weight-restricted sports and RED-S is certainly recognised as a real danger of an extreme approach to dieting.

3.       Fuel the day before

One of the earliest scientific contributions to the field of performance nutrition was the seminal discovery that increasing dietary carbohydrate intake increases our muscle glycogen stores, the substrate that fuels moderate to high-intensity exercise. For this reason, it is in fact what we eat and drink the day before where the biggest performance advantage can often be obtained. In using the performance language across team sports, this day has now become known as ‘match day minus 1’, where the nutritional priority is simply to increase your daily carbohydrate intake to ensure that kick-off commences the next day with optimal muscle glycogen stores.

The practice of carbohydrate-loading doesn’t necessarily have to be achieved through food sources and, perhaps, a more practical and simpler approach is to increase the consumption of carbohydrate sports drinks. The reliance on fluid versus food has benefits not only from an athlete adherence point of view but also in that it can achieve the same glycogen enhancing effects in the absence of any gastrointestinal discomfort associated with increased consumption of solid foods.

If there is one day of the week where getting your nutrition right will fuel performance, it is ‘matchday minus 1.’ A performance culture and winning mindset that embraces ‘match day minus 1’ really could lead to the last-minute winning goal or a sprint finish towards home.

4.       Fuel during your event

Whilst fuelling the day before is of paramount importance, it should also be recognised that our muscle glycogen stores can run out with as little as 90 minutes of intense exercise. It is for this reason that fuelling during the event itself can often be the difference between winning and losing. For team sports, the current consensus is to consume between 30 and 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour.

For endurance sports incorporating exercise durations more than two hours, the fuelling recommendations increase to around 90 grams per hour. Such fuelling strategies often comprise a mix of fluids, gels and solid foods and of course, each athlete should refine and practise their ‘competition’ day fuelling schedule in training. Where once there was often a fear around carbohydrate (often in the belief that ‘carbohydrates make you fat’), it is apparent that athletes are now embracing the importance of fuelling during exercise.

5.       Recovery is key

The training and competitive demands that are being placed on elite athletes are increasing year by year. It is no surprise, therefore, that recovery is ranked number 1 in the performance priority list. From a nutritional perspective, we often place our emphasis on ‘acute’ recovery strategies, that is, promoting the recovery process in the first 3-4 hours after competition. However, it might be suggested that athletes should extend their focus and make recovery a central component of their ‘daily’ strategies, thus encompass nutritional recovery as part of their normal lifestyle and weekly flow.


BOOK ONLINE

Share

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Subscribe for all the
Point Health news