An Introduction to Sports Nutrition

The aim of this article should facilitate a foundation from which you can analyse your own nutritional programme, alongside both your physiological and psychological development in order to allow you to reach your full potential

From the perspective of a budding clinical sports nutritionist, I will always look for development and improvement in the aspect of nutrition to find a potential gain for every athlete

The saying that working out is “20% in the gym, 80% in the kitchen” is as true in my eyes as it would have been decades ago, yet the aspect of nutrition and the substantial role it plays in elite performance has only been recognised in a serious manner in recent years

Your nutritional training and planning should always run in sync with your current phase of training within your periodisation/ macrocycle e.g. hypertrophy, and should provide you essentially with the macronutrients and calorific intake to achieve your goals, with a focus afterwards on nutritional intake to maximise recovery. Just as your training programme will be constantly adapted and adjusted according to your goals, so should your diet alongside it. Following the goals and training programmes of other individuals may not leads to any advances or gains in your training and performance, especially if the training is sport specific or aimed towards achieving a different aim.

The first step is an initial assessment of your diet. With the foundation of a healthy dietary intake, you will be able to build upon this with the correct supplementation to support you achieving your goals. Cleaning up your diet will require planning, dedication and hard work, along with some sacrifices. Although this may seem tough in the beginning, remember that this is what is required to achieve your maximum potential. Bad habits will be difficult to change, but once they have been and you begin to feel the benefits of your new lifestyle you will wonder why you made those choices in the first place

Take 3 to 4 months to turn your current diet into a clean programme, optimised to get the most out of your training. Your main goals, from a long-term point of view, will never be achieved with a quick fix or scheme, and so shouldn’t be attempted with the new ‘quick fix’ diet or developing a nutritional bad habit.

The other problem with the thought of “diets” is that during the “diet” period you feel like you are always missing something or being denied. This is why people often cheat and fail.

One problem with what we are asked you to do is that, to succeed, you have you have to pay a great deal of attention to the detail and some people may view you as boring. There are a lot of obvious answers to this criticism, but a point that is commonly missed is that once you have made behavioural changes to your diet you will have more flexibility in what you can and cannot eat. So after an initial period of very hard work you will re-enter the real world again, only now you will be succeeding in it, with what will appear to you and those around you as very little effort! Success is never boring.

Realism and Flexibility

When completing an assessment of your overall nutrition, two words must stay prominent in the your mind – realism and flexibility. Both of these are crucial components in you achieving your goals, and both go hand in hand in allowing you to achieve your maximum potential in whatever sporting field you choose. When analysing your nutritional intake, the realism of what you can do e.g. food preparation time may be scarce, and so meal preparation can be arduous, should work alongside the flexibility of your working schedule and ability to train beside that.

Planning for your sport

Each sport is unique in its own physical and cognitive demands upon the performer, and so should be treated that way. The nutritional requirements of a sumo wrestler will be somewhat different to that of a sprint cyclist, for a whole manner of reasons. Treating athletes as one and the same in terms of nutritional requirements and intake is illogical, and so you must be realistic in your dietary demands and plan accordingly.

Analysing your programme

As with any aspect of an athlete’s life, there are no quick fixes, no shortcuts. You must be realistic with yourself sooner rather than later, scrutinise and assess what is working and what is not. If it doesn’t work, ditch it and explore other avenues. Too many people I have spoken to continue to use techniques that just don’t work for them, yet they hope for massive changes if they continue. Perseverance is key with all things in life, but if something is not working for you, research other options and avenues to explore

Your nutritional programme should essentially allow you to achieve the physical demands and requirements of your sport, and so enable you to perform optimally. Your programme should always fit into both your short and long term goals.

Consistency

Consistency is very important to make progress. If you cheat a little everyday you will make not be making the progress you hoped for or even no progress at all, but worse than that you will believe that you have tried really hard and done really well. When you make no progress you will become disheartened and will want to give up. Short-term diets and fixes do not work, always think of your long term goals and base your nutrition on the goals you have set for the long and short term future. Having these in the forefront of your mind will allow you to make positive ideas and concise decisions about your progression

Understand why you are doing what you are doing

Doing something without knowing why you are doing it is like following the pied piper. In all aspects of your training you should be inquisitive and ask questions:

• ·      What benefits can I get from this? How will this help my performance
• ·      Has this worked with other athletes?
• ·      Is this relevant to my sport/goals?
• ·      How realistic is this for my current cycle/ phase of training?

By asking these questions you can continually reassess your progress, develop ideas for your continued development and fuel your potential to grow as an athlete

Knowledge is power

When you have the time, read. As much as it may be boring, in the long run it will benefit you one hundred fold. 2If you do not understand what you are doing or why you have been asked to change a habit or behavioural pattern, you are unlikely to succeed. The more you understand about how your body functions, responds to, and recovers from training and playing the better chance you have of making continual progress and avoiding injury. You will gradually see how what you eat affects every facet of your performance in the gym or on the pitch or anywhere else for that matter. The way I keep updated with new dietary discoveries, training methods and developments is through reading

If you follow these fundamentals you will no doubt put yourself in a good stead for developing and making progress in what sport or exercise you do

The right choices in the kitchen make your choices in the gym worthwhile!

This article was expertly written by Morgan Price-King BSc.

Basic Principles of Sports Nutrition to follow

When preparing to train and compete in a sport, athletes need to build a foundation from which they can develop and progress. In my opinion diet and nutrition should provide a consistent underlying fundamental from which all the training and performing. Assessing your diet from its present state until where it is where you want it to be is a process, a journey.

When taking on an assessment of your nutritional intake, in terms of the demands of your sport, you should always consider a few fundamental notions to follow to help you progress:

1.    Saturated fats and salt levels should be avoided or kept to a minimum wherever possible

2.    Seasoning can be a great way to enhance the flavour of foods without resorting to high sugar sauces – things like herbs, spices (chilli can be a great addition to spend up the metabolism, due to its capsicum content) and black pepper– use as much as you wish to enhance taste

3.    Be careful of low fat substitutes – although they may provide a low fat alternative to your choice, it may be counteracted by high levels of sugar or additives as a result, so always check and use with caution

4.    Consider GI when consuming carbohydrates – try to predominantly use low GI carbs as sources of fuel from carbohydrates, wholegrain and whole wheat are best. These give you a more gradual release of energy at a more consistent level

5.    Proteins in their original form should be eaten regularly - Each meal to contain some bio-available protein in low fat form – e.g. chicken breast, turkey breast, and very lean beef, and include oily fish as a choice at least twice a week.

6.    Fats have benefits – especially during the recovery process, unprocessed fats sourced from both animals and vegetables will be beneficial to your recovery. Try food sources such as salmon, mackerel and herring alongside vegetables such as avocado will benefit you immensely. Cooking your food using coconut oil will only boost these benefits further, and provide natural aids that cooking with normal oil cannot provide

7.    Deep fried foods should be a no-go area – using different variations of cooking to keep things fresh and remove tedium. Techniques include dry roasting, baking steaming and grilling

8.    Salads and vegetables with at least two meals of the day.

9.    Still mineral should be served with all meals

10. Keep it simple - Good simple foods with plenty of taste/flavour works best - there is no need for adding lots of extras just for an extravagant presentation or serving of food.

11. Plan ahead – this should go alongside the above point, in order to maximise the benefits you can reap.

The right choices in the kitchen make your choices in the gym worthwhile!

This article was expertly written by Morgan Price-King BSc.