Nutrition is of the highest importance for athletes. When athletes come here we always get a three day log of their nutrition. We want to know everything these athletes are eating from the minute they wake up to the minute they go to sleep. If, for example, an athlete is drinking a lot of soda or pop, then that athlete has a lot of sugar and a lot of carbonation that is actually not benefiting them on the field. If this athlete was to excel at a higher level, they’re going to need to change their diet. So, we don’t only want to look at athletes now, we want to look at athletes in the future, what they’re going to be in the future. So we bring that nutrition and we bring it on a larger scale, say This is what you want to be eating, how you want to be eating. We want athletes to know they have options, but they want to choose good options.

There are a lot of scenarios out there, a lot of clichs, high protein this, high carbohydrates that, low fat this, and I think its really about each athlete individually. We know that we’re 80% of the puzzle. Fixing the mechanical and the force output and the power output, that’s 20% of the problem. The other 80% is the recovery. I tell the athletes all the time, if you think about the highest level, the reason, unfortunately, that our athletes, our professional athletes are on steroids is because it ensures recovery. The myth is that steroids are what’s making them bigger, stronger, and faster and that’s really false. Its that its insuring a high level of recovery. The problem is that steroids is cheating and damage that steroids is doing, extra growth hormone to the kidneys and liver within the body, is almost 1 year of abuse to 7 years of damage. And so that’s the reason that you’re seeing the athletes at 38, 39, 40 years old have dramatic heart attacks because they were abusing those types of hormones at 21, 22, 23 years old.

So, where am I going with this? Are we condoning steroids? Absolutely not. But the 80% that’s in the athlete’s hands that we really need to take care of is the nutrition and recovery. So, if we don’t pinpoint what their caloric need is, how much protein, carbs, and fats they need on a regular basis, what kind of gas, their fluid, what kind of fluid intake they need, how many times they need to have a water bottle in them, or 24 oz. of water, if we don’t address those things, then we know that the recovery is going to be poor. And if the recovery is poor, then the stimulus that we give them in here isn’t going to solicit a high adaptation. So the nutrition is 80% of the issue. Its almost the number 1 issue that we face and one of the 1 number one issuer that we address when an athlete comes to Proformance.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2012 at 6:02 pm and is filed under Coaches Corner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.