KiralyTeam

Sport nutrition is not much different from general nutrition, the most important is to eat a balanced diet each day.

To exercise consistently, you need to provide a good supply of high-quality energy to your working muscles. The easiest way to to this is to eat a balanced breakfast and continue eating a variety of high-quality foods throughout the day.

The optimal calorie intake depends on the sportsman’s gender, age, weight, body mass, but in general we can say that combat sports it is about 70-75 kcal/kg/day (more than 90 minutes of work out each day).

Each meal should contain a varied combination of carbohydrates, protein and fat.

Proteins – An adult body contains about 9-11 kg of protein, mainly (46%) in the skeletal muscles, but in the bones (18%) and in the skin (9%), as blood’s hemoglobin (7,5%), as serum proteins (2,5%). Sportsman’s daily need is about 1g/kg/day. It can be more, about 2,5 g when we want to increase muscle mass.

Carbohydrates – These gives 55-60% of the daily energy, in an intensive training period it can be 70%. 6-10 g/kg/day is needed in general, right before a competition the portion can be increased also to load glycogen stores, 12-13 g.

Fats – The optimal fat intake gives 25-30% of the daily energy. If there is an extra big energy demand, the easiest is to increase fat amount as it contains the most energy (9 ckal/g compared to carbohydrates 3.75 ckal/g and proteins 4 ckal/g). Fats are important for hormons, vitamins and several biochemical procedures also.

Several Hours Before You Workout

The pre-exercise meal will vary depending on your exercise style. If you workout in the evening, lunch should include easily digestible foods high in complex carbohydrates, such as pasta, breads, fruits and vegetables. A big salad with a small amount of protein works well, select a small amount of lean meat such as chicken or fish.

If you exercise first thing in the morning, you’ll probably feel best if you eat a light breakfast of fruit, toast, or an egg.

Regardless of what you choice to eat, you should drink plenty of water before and during a morning workout.

Thirty Minutes Before You Workout

Depending on the type and duration of workout, you’ll want to eat a small snack and drink some water a half hour before you get going. Trail mix is great for aerobic workouts over 60 or 90 minutes, but if you are going hard for thirty minutes, you probably only need a half of an energy or granola/muesli bar, a large banana, a few crackers. For a shorter workout, you may not want to eat anything at all, but can get a few calories from drinking a sport drink.

You should also start drinking water before your workout.

During Your Workout

Proper hydration during exercise depends upon the intensity and duration of exercise, the fitness of the athlete, and weather conditions. In most of the cases food is not needed this peirod, unless it takes for more than 3 hours (rather competitions), then you can have the same foods as before the training.

Sport drinks are the best for rehydration as they contain also minerals and carbohydrates, so they dont only replace the water lost through sweat.

Eating After Your Workout

The post-exercise meal should be eaten within two hours of a long or intense workout in order to reload the glycogen stores for continued exercise. While research shows eating 100-200 grams of carbohydrate within two hours of endurance exercise is essential to building adequate glycogen stores, eating a combination of both carbohydrate and protein seems to be an even better option.

A good tip for light dinner after work out is a banana shake.

Nutrition supplements

Based on the researches athletes need more vitamins and minerals than non-athletes, but the difference is not that much. A complex multivitamin product is enough in general with a well balanced diet.

Even more amino acids, vitamin, proteins, other products are recommended in individual extra needs, for example illness, slimming diet, weight gain. While we are trying to enchance our perfomance, we always have to keep the dopping rules in our mind.

The best would be to have an individual nutrition (cooperation with a nutritionist or a doctor) for every atheletes considering the daily routine, age, body mass and individual needs – such as possibly lack of vitamins etc and we have to experience what is good for ourselves.

More coming…

• Diet
• Sport nutrition supplements
• Dopping
• Sport drinks
• Calorie charts

Tags: balance, Barbara Szendrei, calorie, carbonhydrate, diet, fat, glycogen, hydration, KiralyTeam, post-exercise meal, pre-exercise meal, protein, sport nutrition, vitamin, workout

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