Nutrition in the Week Leading up to a Competition

June 20, 2018

Transcribed from video:

– Nutrition, and I know there’s a lot of interest in nutrition and what you should be doing competition-wise to fuel your body. We’ve talked about low-hanging fruit a lot this weekend. What’s the easiest thing you can reach up and pluck off the tree and it’s still tasty. It still has a lot of impact and a lot of result there. And nutrition one week out, game day nutrition, is a big deal here. Because you guys train hard. You train super hard. You practise your skills. You work on your weaknesses. Your programming is good. You’re varying the stimuli. You’re scaling around injury. Your mental game is good. And then you’re dehydrated going into a competition. And all of that stuff falls flat, because that has to support everything. If the correct nutrition and hydration isn’t there, doesn’t matter how strong you are here or here, you’re not going to be able to manifest that into the events. So hydration is obviously very important. If you’re 3-5% dehydrated, that can drop your performance by up to 15%. So a very small level of dehydration, your performance will start to really fall away. The basic nutritional recommendations, guys. The week leading into the competition is going to be very similar to what you would normally do in your training. Now, obviously you don’t want to make any big changes. The last thing you want to do is suddenly start having a lot of processed carbohydrates to try and carb load before an event if you’re not used to that. Now, you can increase carbohydrates in a couple of days leading up to the competition because you guys will remember we talked about the importance of having that hepatic glycogen in the body. So that sugar, the glucose, it’s stored in your liver, so then when you go to exercise, you can pull that out of the liver to be able to recharge the batteries and keep those blood sugar levels constant and consistent. Post-exercise nutrition. 30 grammes of whey protein isolate, 60 grammes of that glucose.

Dan Williams

Dan Williams

Founder/Director

Dan Williams is the Director of Range of Motion and leads a team of Exercise Physiologists, Sports Scientists, Physiotherapists and Coaches. He has a Bachelor of Science (Exercise and Health Science) and a Postgraduate Bachelor of Exercise Rehabilitation Science from The University of Western Australia, with minors in Biomechanics and Sport Psychology.

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