High-Performance Nutrition for Athletes – Part Two

Nutrition is how we acquire the energy our body needs to perform all its tasks and functions. The food we choose to consume can have a dramatic impact on our results, both on and off the field. Since you already train hard to achieve a specific goal, it’s time to start focusing on the food choices that will optimize your training effects. Why put so much effort into the gym and the field only to waste it all due to poor dietary habits?

The Role of Nutrition in Training

Nutrition is crucial for your ability to recover from exercise. Exercise causes damage at the cellular level, primarily due to the repetitive contractions required for your muscles to produce movement. Exercise acts as stress on your body, temporarily tiring and weakening it to produce a positive adaptation, making your body stronger, faster, and more powerful depending on the type of training. Without proper nutrition, the body doesn’t receive the building blocks it needs to recover from training. After exercise, the body is in a state of breakdown known as ‘catabolism.’ The body will remain in this catabolic state until it receives the nutritional building blocks necessary to start the repair and recovery process. This is why nutrition is especially important after exercising, training, or athletic events. Exercise is only as good as your body’s ability to recover from it.

Poor nutrition = poor recovery = poor performance.

All of this together can lead to overtraining, exhaustion, decreased motivation, and especially injury.

The benefits of high-performance nutrition for athletes include:

• Improved performance in the gym, on the track, field, or arena
• Enhanced focus and motivation
• Reduced fatigue and stress
• Lower risk of injury
• Faster recovery time after injury
• Faster recovery from exercise-induced stress
• Increased muscle mass
• Reduced body fat
• Improved immune system function
• Reduced likelihood of illness
• Improved hormonal and metabolic parameters

1. Responsibility

As an athlete, you must take responsibility for your food choices. Do you want to lose body fat and increase muscle mass? Great, let’s do it! But it won’t always be easy. Good nutrition requires focus and consistency. As an athlete, you are responsible for your choices and behavior. How you care for your body is your responsibility.

2. Preparation

Good nutrition doesn’t happen by itself. I doubt many of you have a personal chef to prepare nutritious meals whenever you want. You need to have good preparation, or you won’t succeed. This comes down to responsibility and means you must play an active role in grocery shopping, cooking, and meal preparation.

3. Execution

A plan is great, but it needs to be executed to be effective. If the plan on paper doesn’t translate into a meal on your table, it won’t benefit your body.

Tips for Building Muscle

The following strategies are recommended for athletes who want to increase muscle mass. Many athletes need to increase their muscle mass to become stronger and highly effective on the field or in the arena. The listed strategies provide an excellent foundation for athletes to achieve this goal.

• Eat more. Eat early. Eat often. If you want to get bigger, you have to eat, almost all the time. As a general rule, if you’re not eating, you’re not growing. Now, this DOES NOT give you the right to eat whatever you want all the time. Remember, you’re trying to gain muscle mass, not just increase body weight. A bigger but fatter athlete is not a superior athlete, so make sure to stick to healthy, nutrient-rich foods. NEVER skip breakfast and plan your next meal in advance.
• Start your day with a liquid meal when possible (20-30 grams of Whey Protein in a shake about 30-40 minutes before breakfast). As soon as you wake up in the morning, consume a Whey Protein shake while preparing for your day. This will quickly provide your body with proteins after overnight fasting. Then, when you’re ready for your day, eat a regular breakfast. This will help you add valuable calories when your body can best utilize them. This is a quick way to nourish your muscles at the start of the day.
• Cook your food in bulk and be prepared: ‘Sunday ritual.’ With the amount of food you’ll need to consume during the week, it’s a good idea to prepare in advance. One effective strategy is to cook food in bulk so you can have easier access throughout the week. You can prepare chicken and meat twice a week. Cooked chicken in the fridge can last 3-4 days. The same goes for red meat. When you cook the meat, let it cool to room temperature and then put it in the fridge in a Tupperware container. Then you can easily take it out of the fridge and reheat it. This will save you time and significantly simplify meal planning. The more accessible the food, the more likely you are to eat it.
• Take BCAA between meals (between breakfast and lunch and/or lunch and dinner) to prevent muscle breakdown. When trying to build muscle, you want to make sure your body is never in a catabolic state or a state of breakdown. When the body goes without food (fuel) for a long time, it loses part of the anabolic momentum and can begin to break down muscle. When we want to increase muscle mass, we want to avoid the catabolic state at all costs. If you take 1 scoop of BCAA in 500 ml of water, you can avoid this and maintain muscle mass. BCAA is optimal to take once a day, and at most twice a day.
• Resistance training 5 hours a week. If you want to gain healthy muscles, do resistance training to provide your body with a stimulus for muscle growth.
• Sleep 8 hours every night. Sleep helps you repair and recover. Recovery is when you build muscles. Without sleep, there is no recovery and no muscle growth. Remember, exercise is only as effective as your ability to recover. Want to increase muscle? Then ensure you get 8 hours of sleep.
• Take a nap during the day. This is an effective way to give your body an anabolic boost. The best time to nap is after you’ve eaten your post-workout meal. This will help your body digest the food and immediately start the muscle repair process.
• Provide yourself with nutritious snacks between meals (nuts and fruit mix). You need to provide yourself with food during periods when it’s hard to eat, such as during lectures or while traveling. Have a nutritious snack ready. One recommendation is to have some nuts (almonds, cashews, walnuts) and dried fruit for snacking. This is an excellent nutrient-rich snack! Super shakes are also a good choice.

Now that you have all the necessary information, it’s time for action!