Helpful Nutritional Hints to Keep Soccer Players at their Peak
If you have ever played soccer, you know that it is a pretty intense sport. In order to play your best, you not only have to practice your game, but you have to feed your body. The intense workout soccer entails means that you should be careful to ensure that your body is getting everything you need.
As with any style of diet, those playing soccer need to eat well-balanced meals with a variety of different foods. These should include enough complete proteins for developing strength and speed, the right amount of carbohydrates to increase glycogen reserves, lower fat content in foods, and enough of the vitamins, minerals, and other elements that the body needs. It is also important to get enough fluids to prevent dehydration – during a match a soccer player can lose 2-7 pounds of body weight alone just from sweating. Keep fluid intake high, but stay away from sodas and other caffeinated beverages. Sports drinks are good for during a game, but keep in mind that they are often loaded with sugar, so use in moderation.
When the game is can have an influence on what you should eat. The meal immediately before should be lighter, and have the larger meal at a different time. For example, for a morning game, breakfast should be light and easy to digest, and lunch should be larger with plenty of nutrition to replenish the player. If it is an afternoon game, it is ok to have a larger breakfast, and then a small easy to digest lunch. However, the last meal should be about 3 hours before the start of a game to give food a chance to digest. Players should also wait at least an hour after a game before the next meal. The day of the game, the players should not have: any kind of fatty dishes, fried foods, deli meats, canned fish, hard-boiled eggs, anything pickled, beans, spicy food, or rich desserts.
It is also highly recommended that, like everyone else, soccer players take a daily vitamin and mineral supplement. While you should not consider taking a pill instead of eating – getting your nutrition from whole foods is much better than anything you can get in a pill – it can help with any nutritional gaps that you might suffer from a bad meal choice here or there.
There are other things to watch out for that may hurt your soccer performance as well if you are not careful.
One is skipping breakfast before a mid-morning soccer game. While the extra 30 minutes of sleep may seem important, your blood sugar drops while you sleep. This means that you need to boost it back up before a game or your performance may not be at its peak. Keep it light, so that it has time to digest and does not slow you down. Cereal, bread, and fruit or fruit juice are good choices.
Another thing is getting too into the moment and forgetting to eat – or being so nervous that it makes the player nauseous. For this, it is often best to plan ahead. Have a meal several hours ahead of time, so that as game time approaches you have enough calories to work with. At least 300 to 500 calories is ideal, and eat foods that you know sit well with you so that you do not have a surprise complaint from your stomach.
A third issue is to fill up on junk food. Athletes may be enticed to snacking on a candy bar or other sugary treat right before a game. While eating candy improved performance about ten percent over having nothing to eat at all, eating a meal 4 hours before and then a candy bar a few minutes before improved performance by 20%. As you can see, having a healthy meal beforehand is still the way to go. Often cravings for a quick fix snack are a sign that you have not eaten enough food earlier in the day, so never skip breakfast.
As with any sport, always keep in mind that is important to make healthy eating decisions. Do that, and your nutritional intake should be just fine. Listen to the needs of your body, and go with it
Tags: essential nutrients, food items, maintaining health, nutrition, playing soccer, soccer athletes