Competing in all events
Issue: Volume Number
This article is dedicated to coaches of athletes who enjoy a wide variety of sports. How can you help an athlete recover from a morning swim session in order to back up for the afternoon’s bike ride? Is there a specific nutrition program to follow to help athletes achieve all their performance goals? This article will help coaches ensure that the food and fluids athletes consume for one sport will also satisfy the body's fuel requirements for another.
Generally, nutrition guidelines are similar for different types of sport, with most requiring a moderate-to-high carbohydrate diet that is relatively low in fat and contains plenty of fluids.
The most significant factor that changes nutrition requirements for individual athletes is the length of training and competition sessions. If training sessions or competition events last for longer than 60 minutes, there is well-documented evidence to show that carbohydrate consumption immediately prior to, and during, activity optimises performance (Burke and Hawley 1999). Some sporting events that fit this category include football of all codes, triathlon, long distance running and swim training.
Hydration
Ensuring adequate hydration is one of the most important things an athlete can do to achieve optimal performance in both training and competition (Maughan 2000). Too often athletes only remember to hydrate adequately around competition time. Many athletes fail to consider whether they are drinking enough during the day to stay properly hydrated for their training sessions. All it takes is a busy day at work, a skipped lunch break and an afternoon full of meetings before you realise that you have hardly managed to drink any fluids, let alone the three to four plus litres of fluid that are required to stay properly hydrated, even on rest days.
Simple ways to improve fluid intake during the day:
- carry a drink bottle with you in the car
- always have a drink bottle at your desk
- carry some sports drink in your sports bag.
These simple steps encourage intake of fluid throughout the day and will help maintain an adequate level of hydration.
Do not overdo water intake because too much water can cause a dangerous fall in blood sodium. Most athletes require from three to 10 litres of fluid during a training day, depending upon sweat losses ( The 2000 National Athletic Trainers' Association Position Statement: Fluid Replacement for Athletes) .
For training and competition, the first priority is to begin the session well hydrated. Remember to take into account fluid losses that can be experienced during pre-event training and warm-up sessions. For high-intensity events (in which some level of dehydration is inevitable), it is imperative that athletes keep taking in fluid at intervals throughout the course of the event.
Tips to help athletes consume fluid regularly:
- Set a watch that has a ‘countdown’ function to encourage drinking at regular time intervals.
- Drink enough to minimise weight loss during training and competition to keep well hydrated. Weight loss of more than a kilogram indicates dehydration and the need to drink more during exercise. Weight gain indicates over-drinking and the need to cut back on drinking in future sessions.
For athletes competing in multiple events on the same day (such as a football carnival or knockout competition), a strategy should be developed in advance to help prevent dehydration. This plan could be a simple list of when and how much to drink before, during and after the events. Sports drinks such as Gatorade are particularly useful to include in the plan as they are also a source of carbohydrate for the muscles. The sodium or ‘salt’ contained in Gatorade will stimulate the thirst receptors in the body to ensure an athlete takes in an adequate volume of fluid.
Recovery
Recovery becomes critical when athletes have more than one event per day and following hard training sessions. There are several well-researched strategies than can be used by athletes to speed recovery.
The two most important strategies are for athletes to:
- fully replace fluid lost during competition
- adequately replace muscle glycogen.
The amount of fluid an athlete loses during a session can be roughly estimated after an athlete has completed regular weigh-ins before and after training or competition sessions. This provides athletes with the quantities of fluid they need to be drinking after sessions to prevent dehydration.
It is important for athletes to know that the amount of fluid lost in kilograms on the scales needs to be replaced by 1.5 times in the amount of fluid drunk. For example, if an athlete is one kilogram lighter after a session, they need to drink 1.5 litres of fluid to fully rehydrate. You can also use the Gatorade Good Hydration Kit for more ideas on how to monitor your hydration status. Contact gatorade@fleishman.com for more information on the hydration kit.
It is also known that muscle glycogen is replaced more effectively if high glycaemic index carbohydrates are consumed within the first 30 minutes after activity.
Examples of high glycaemic index carbohydrates include:
- sports drinks
- carbohydrate gels
- white bread sandwiches with jam or honey
- bananas
- low-fat muffins
- fruit juice
- cereal bars
- rice crackers.
There is value in ingesting 10–20 grams of high-quality protein along with carbohydrate, starting within 30 minutes following exercise and continuing every two hours until the next full meal. Also, ingesting adequate amounts of healthy fat (~1 g fat / kg body weight / day) will help restore intramuscular fat (triglyceride) levels. This is one reason athletes should not follow a strict low-fat diet.
Each athlete has different foods that are tolerable during multi-event competitions. Therefore, if you are a coach for a number of athletes, it is preferable to have a range of high glycaemic index foods and beverages available to accommodate athletes' varying preferences.
For athletes training a couple of times per day, good recovery strategies are vital for optimal performance at each training session. Athletes should be encouraged to carry both readily available fluids and high glycaemic index carbohydrates at all times, to adequately refuel for the next session. Individuals are recommended to consume snacks such as sports drinks, liquid meal drinks such as Sustagen, cereal bars and plain sandwiches.
Did you know?
- Athletes often forget to take into account the effect of warming up on fluid losses, and may therefore fail to compensate by drinking enough before the game or event begins.
- If carbohydrate-containing foods are consumed within half an hour of training or competition, significantly more muscle glycogen is restored.
- High glycaemic index carbohydrates act to replace muscle glycogen faster than low glycaemic index carbohydrates.
Practical tips for coaches
- Encourage athletes to ‘practise’ nutrition and hydration strategies for use during competition.
- Where possible, simulate competition conditions so athletes can trial different nutrition and hydration strategies at the level of intensity similar to competition.
- Encourage athletes to have an active nutrition and hydration plan for all training sessions, to ensure optimal recovery and performance at all times during the training program.
- For competition days in which a number of events/games are played, organise in advance for appropriate food and fluids to be available to your athletes. This will enable athletes to optimally prepare for their next game or event.
- If you coach a team sport, set your watch to remind players to drink halfway through the first half or quarter, not just at half time or for the last five minutes of the game.
Case study
Twice a season the local rugby league club plays a knockout competition in which each team plays up to ten 20-minute games of footy. Coach Barry is worried about how he will able to keep his players fresh for the semi-finals later in the day, as it is very important that his team does well in this competition. Coach Barry decides to consult with his local sports dietitian prior to the tournament, to get some ideas on how to keep his boys fuelled with energy for the day.
Some ideas Coach Barry and his dietitian come up with include:
- Having the players weigh in before and after each game, with help from his support staff so each player knows how much he ideally needs to drink before the next match.
- The team keeps both a bottle of water and a bottle of sports drink on hand for players to alternate between during the day.
- Support staff are asked to offer players their bottles during all breaks during the play.
- The coach puts together a pack of assorted high glycaemic index snacks including sports drinks, cargohydrate gels, low-fat muffins, jam sandwiches and cereal bars to nibble on between games. The coach also puts together some sandwiches with lean meat, yoghurt and liquid meal drinks for players to consume when there are breaks longer than one hour between games, in order to fuel the players with some more substantial food.
This article is reproduced with permission of the editorial team at The Coaches’ Edge. To join The Coaches Edge, log onto www.coachesedge.com.au
References
Burke, LM and JA Hawley 1999, ‘Carbohydrate and exercise’, Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care 2:515–20.
Maughan, RJ 2000, ‘Fluid and carbohydrate intake during exercise’, in LM Burke and V Deakin, V (eds), Clinical Sports Nutrition, McGraw Hill, Australia.
Noakes, TD, Rehrer, MJ and Maughan, RJ 1991, ‘The importance of volume in regulating gastric emptying’, Medicine in Science in Sports and Exercise 23:307–13.
‘The 2000 National Athletic Trainers’ Association Position Statement: Fluid Replacement for Athletes’, Journal of Athletic Training, 35(2):212–24, 2000.
