When becoming an elite athlete is your primary goal, there are obviously a number variables that need to absolutely be addressed to fulfill the equation for success. Among these variables, nutrition, and even more importantly hydration rank high in this performance equation. Of course this can’t come as a surprise to you guys by now…considering the fact that I felt strongly about this to write a darn book on it!!
There are many misconceptions dealing with dehydration. Since football season is coming up and the weather here out East is blistering hot, I wanted to cover some of the things you should be doing daily to get yourself primed for peak performance. Notice I’m talking about “priming” the body and not “reacting” after that fact…when it’s often too late? Just as you wouldn’t attempt to run a car without motor oil, you can’t expect your body to respond for you as you hit summer camp practices…if you’re not supplying it with the liquid that makes it run smoothly. Proactive Hydration is where it’s at my friends! Let me explain.
Some of you out there reading this might be entering into your upcoming football season…possibly on the bubble of getting that starting spot, or that scholarship you’ve always dreamed of, or just impressing your peers (and that cute girl you wished would show you just a little attention in school!). If that’s you…wouldn’t you want to give yourself the best chance possible to succeed? I mean after all, you spent the hours in the weight room to improve your strength, you’ve worked on your footwork and agility, you’ve improved your speed (hopefully by listening to my buddy Latif’s unmatched advice on the topic!), you’ve even decided to eat better knowing it will pay off on the field. Well, then why have you neglected to do perhaps the simplest of ALL of those things and just make sure you’re getting in adequate amounts of water?!?
Believe me…I’m not picking on you…because I sat where you do for many years. I hated drinking water! Go figure. I don’t know what it was….I just felt inconvenienced every time I had to go get a drink of water, so I just wouldn’t do it. That was until I actually started to see the serious effects not drinking enough could have on not only my body, but perhaps even more disturbingly for me (since I was busting my butt trying to get ready for football in the offseason) was the negative impact it could have on my performance!
How’s this one for you? A 3% drop in body hydration levels can decrease reaction time by up to 20%, power output by almost %30 and total strength by somewhere in between those two!! Draw that out a bit and it’s not too hard to see that speed, quickness, defensive ability, and nearly every aspect of your game dramatically suffers at again…just a 3% drop in total body hydration!!
When you consider that some athletes may lose up to 10-12 cups of fluid when practicing in hot/humid weather, it gets even more disturbing. That said, though…I’m not trying to make this look like a bleak situation….because it isn’t. As a matter of fact guys, it’s got a real easy solution. You ready? Drink more water!! I know…scientific huh? But truly that’s the essence of this. But where I can help you is to point out a few helpful strategies to make the whole thing less of a chore and easier to tackle (no pun intended).
The first important point is, again, you’ve got to stay proactive with your hydration! Don’t wait to feel thirsty….ever! I always say…if you let yourself get thirsty it’s already WAY TOO LATE! Avoid this by drinking constantly. Either keep a bottle with you all day and refill it often (I’ll even keep some rubber bands wrapped around my bottle and take them off every time I refill it…as a way of tracking how many bottles I’ve had for the day!) or just try to keep a small little Dixie cup near the sink and every time you walk through the room, stop and chug down 5 ounces! The little amounts consumed consistenly will quickly add up to a lot!
As you approach competition, there’s no such thing in my mind as pre-event and post-event hydration. Instead, drink before, during and after! You’ll be losing enormous amounts of water (and electrolytes) through your sweat as you compete…so keep that steady replacement going to never have to experience that 3% dip I referred to earlier. As far as what type of replacement qualifies as GOOD replacement, well….you can probably imagine that coca-cola isn’t on my list!
Just remember…when we sweat we not only lose water, we lose sodium and potassium so it is very important for athletes to replace these electrolytes as well. Sports drinks fit the bill perfectly here. To be honest, the type of sports drink doesn’t really matter (although my boy David Wright is sponsored by Vitamin Water so feel free to support them!). As long as you are replenish your electrolytes the name of the drink is not an issue. The best strategy to ensure equal amounts of water and electrolyte replenishment is to either alternate cups of sports drink and water….or just to dilute a sports drink with water. Either will work. Just remember to get both!
Finally…what if you think you may have gone too far? You feel as if you may already be dehydrated? How can you check? There are a number of ways to check and see, but the two ways I’ve found most useful with both myself and my athletes are the weight test, and the urine test. For the urine test…simply check the color of your pee! I know, simple, a bit juvenile but pretty effective. Light colored, diluted urine probably means you are hydrated; dark colored, concentrated urine is a good bet you’re dehydrated. Sure certain vitamins can throw off the color and darken even a hydrated person’s urine…..but in general this is a pretty good guage.
Weighing yourself before and after exercise is the other simple method. Any weight lost is likely from fluid, so it gives you a target amount to drink to replenish your losses and ensure you avoid dehydration. For every pound you lose you want to drink 16 ounces of water. Simple straight forward and effective.
Like mentioned above there is no one thing that will make you a star athlete, but there is a combination of things that can drastically make changes in your game. Adding more water and sports drinks to your daily regimen will surely increase your performance as I just heavily stressed…. but are you eating at the right times? Getting enough sleep? Understanding how your body/metabolism actually works? These are all things that athlete’s should understand and monitor if you’re looking to gain that competitive edge. If you’re looking for a simple, “plug and play” system that you can either use yourself or with your team…then I highly recommend you grab a copy of my Teen Sports Nutrition Blueprint today (http://sportsnutritionblueprint.com) and reap the benefits immediately.
Filed under Sports Nutrition, Uncategorized by on Aug 5th, 2010. 2 Comments. 
It’s almost that time of the year again! The buzz is growing, anticipation is brimming and opportunity awaits those who have prepared themselves the best for the upcoming Fall Sports Season! School’s back in session in just a few weeks! That said, while the brain may have been given a vacation for a couple months, if your athletes bodies and nutritional habits have as well…you could be in big trouble this season (especially if you’re hoping to compete for championships!).
You see, there really is no offseason anymore in the field of competitive sports. Yes, even at the high school level, there needs to be an initiation of good healthy habits that start to become ingrained in your athletes NOW so that they can carry over into their lives for years and years to come (long after competition has ended for some of them).
The Summer represents a time of opportunity. Opportunity for your players to make themselves better, and opportunity for you to make yourself a better coach. If both of these things happen…when you reconvene at the start of the Fall Sports season, you’ve got a much improved team. Better performance from the players and better leadership at the top.
That said…if in your preparation to become a better coach, you’ve eluded the topic of your athlete’s nutrition (really due mostly to an intimidation over the technical aspects of this kind of information) then I wanted to help you overcome that so that you could be armed with the right questions to ask and the key information that you’ll need to know to get a head start on a successful season and a unified team awareness of how important nutrition will be to ultimately the success of the team this year!
So without further delay….here is Part 1 of my “6 Questions Coaches Need To Know About Their Athlete’s Nutrition” to properly bring yourself up to speed on your athlete’s Summer habits….and more importantly….how to correct them in time for preparing for your greatest season ever!
1. Did you eat breakfast this morning?
If every hand doesn’t go up for this one (trust me, you’ll be lucky if half of them do!) then you need to do something about this before ANYTHING else! Breakfast not only sets the stage for all energy levels throughout the rest of the day, but it also delivers much needed nutrients to the brain to allow for better mental focus, attention, reaction time, and muscle contraction. Most of your athletes have gone over 8-10 hours without eating and the need to “Break” the “Fast” has never been greater than in the morning. For those who claim to “hate” breakfast, make them aware of what this is doing to their body and brain and find some way to convince them that even a little is enough to turn the tables on the energy roller coaster they’re about to embark on if they eat nothing at all!
2. What is the color of your pee?
Don’t laugh…and don’t be ashamed to ask? Whether we admit it or not, it’s normal to check out the color of your pee! After all, how else are we going to know when we’re entering into a severe state of dehydration. Sure, the headaches, dizziness, and nausea that comes with dehydration may give it away, but wouldn’t you like to know BEFORE that happens? After all….by the time it fully sets in it could be too late. So, rely on the old reliable and get your athletes into the habit of checking out the color of their urine throughout the day. The more clear it is, in general, the more hydrated that athlete is. The more dark or yellow…the more likely that they’re entering into dehydration (some vitamins may interfere with this rule, but for the most part it stands the test of time!). ”Keep it Clear” is the phrase you might want to use…especially with the extremely hot initial days of camp! To do this, suggest that your players take in half their weight in ounces of water a day! In other words….your 200lb athlete would need to take in 100 ounces of water each day. On days where there is a lot of sweating going on….recommend an additional 16 oz of water for every pound of weight lost during the hot practice just to replenish and get back to even again!
3. Are you taking creatine?
Most coaches intentionally shy away from supplement questions for lack of a good understanding of them….or worse, turn a blind eye to them as part of a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy! Either one is wrong and actually doing a disservice to your players and their health. If you’re a coach you NEED to know what your players are doing as it may change the recommendations you make to them. Case in point….creatine. Creatine monohydrate is one of the most used supplements in the world right now (particularly in young teens). Why? Because for the most part, long term studies have shown it to be safe AND effective at assisting a gain in weight (through increased intramuscular water and eventual new muscle growth) and increasing short term power output. That said, if your athletes are using this supplement and NOT getting adequate water replacement in to overcome the shuttling of the water INTO the muscles and OUT of the tissues surrounding the muscles…then you could be looking at a team decimated by faster dehydration and ultimately a rash of pulled muscles and injuries. Surely no coach wants to go to battle without his or her best players right? Take the time to find out who is using creatine and recommend that that athlete take in an additional 20% more water than what we figured out in the last question.
So that’s it! 3 to get you started….feel free to comment below or ask me any questions that you might want to know the answer to so you could be ready for the time the first day of camp arrives. In the meantime, stay tuned for next week when we hit the next 3 questions (including one on the most popular supplement being used right now that I absolutely hate that young athletes are using!) Til then…
Stay strong,
Jeff
To learn more about the ins and outs of sports nutrition so you can be a complete coach this season (yep…nutrition plays a huge part in how your players perform on the field!) then head to http://sportsnutritionblueprint.com and check out my step by step “TEEN SPORTS NUTRITION BLUEPRINT”! It takes the “technical” out of nutrition and makes it “practical’!
Filed under Sports Nutrition, Supplements by on Aug 11th, 2010. 15 Comments.
Man…it seems like just yesterday that I posted PART 1 to this article! Just goes to show you how quickly the Fall Season is approaching! We’re now down to just a couple of weeks. That said, are you going to be ready when your kids get to practice to ask them the right questions? Will you be ready to get to the root of their nutrition woes so you can reverse course and help them make their nutrition an ally instead of an opponent? You will if you ask these questions. So without another second delay…let’s take a look at questions 4-6!
4. Are you taking Nitrous Oxide Products?
If so…tell them to stop! These incredibly popular fad supplements are the rage right now. I don’t have actual statistics but I would bet that at least 50% of all males (and some females) who are working out and taking supplements in high school are using some form of a nitrous oxide product…and that’s BAD NEWS! These “vasodilaters” are unsafe and definitely not the right mix for an athlete who may already be a bit stressed (from the competition of trying to gain a spot on the varsity) and who might have a tendency to dehydrate (particularly if they are NOT watching the color of their pee and ARE taking creatine already!). Nitrous Oxide (NO) products are usually laced with high amounts of caffeine to give an intense stimulatory effect. The caffeine not only interferes with motor control (yes that means that your athletes can become jittery and prone to false steps/injuries/etc) but it can drastically change your body’s ability to absorb other important nutrients like iron. The dilation effect that this causes on the vessels in the body will not only shuttle more blood to your muscles (which is supposed to be one of it’s benefits…giving more energy) but also to your brain! This rush of blood flow to the brain has led to more than just a few documented migraines and is not the sort of chemistry you want your athletes to be fooling around with. Want to get them pumped? Have them watch HOOSIERS or “300″ a couple times before the big game, or pull out your best Knute Rockne speechto motivate them and you will have accomplished the same thing….in a far less dangerous way!
5. Did you eat a snack before practice?
One of the most overlooked times of the day to be fueling up is right before practice. If you think about it, the last time the majority of your athletes will have eaten is at lunch time (usually 3 hours before). Attempting to go an entire practice with no more incoming calories is like trying to drive your car cross country when you’ve only got enough gas to make it across the state lines! In order to produce a sustained effort and energy levels your body needs to be “fueled” every 3 hours AT THE LATEST! Failing to do this is not only going to take it’s toll on the performance output for that particular day or practice…but in the long haul, the ability of the body to recover and grow stronger will be compromised as well. A prepractice snack of a protein bar, a piece of fruit with skim milk, a half of a peanut butter sandwich, or even some trail mix is enough to help them to sustain some blood sugar stability heading into the next two hours of intense practice. Knowing that your athlete has “fueled” their tank can now give you confidence in knowing that they can give you all they’ve got without attempting to “run on empty!”
6. How many hours are you sleeping at night?
WHAT?!? That’s not a nutrition question! Actually, indirectly it very much is! In fact, it may be the most important of all of them. Why? Because even the greatest nutrition game plan can come absolutely unglued when the body isn’t allowed to recover properly. When you are sleep deprived your body fights all day just to provide you with enough energy and focus to “zombie” your way through the day. None of the nutrients are used to build you up stronger. That would be a waste of good useable energy in a time when perceived survival is the more immediate concern. Dating all the way back to the cavemen…being alert and having enough energy to run in case you found yourself face to face with a T-REX (the prehistoric version of that 300lb left tackle!) was the prime focus of your body. Any incoming energy was directed at allowing you to survive in situations like this. Where do you think muscle growth and performance enhancement fell on that priority list?? Umm…nowhere close to survival! Same thing applies here. If you’re burning the candle at both ends and barely squeaking by on your recovery and sleep…I don’t care how good you’re eating, or how hard you’re training…none of that will be reflected in your results since your body will just be trying to keep you from sinking even further into the overtraining abyss. The phrase “playing for the tie” applies perfectly here. No continued decline, but certainly NO improvement at all (in your skills, focus, muscularity, or athleticism) if you’re not completing the “nutrition” picture with proper rest and recovery. 7.5 hours of CONSISTENT solid sleep a night will get the job done. Find out how much your athletes are getting…before their lack of zzzz’s puts them on energy empty!
So there you have it. The 6 simple but information loaded questions that you need to be asking your athletes when they hit camp just days from now. No hard sell is needed. No need to go out and try to get a 2 week PHD on nutrition. Just 6 informative questions that will help you get a huge head start on not only knowing your team and what you’re bringing to the field or court this Fall…but also a giant edge on your competition who aren’t asking these questions!
If you’re looking to accelerate your knowledge of nutrition however and want to really gain the upper hand on your competition (but still don’t have the time it will take to learn ALL the ins and outs and the detailed scientific chemical reactions of nutrition and how it relates to performance) then head to http://sportsnutritionblueprint.com and get your copy of the TEEN SPORTS NUTRITION BLUEPRINT! It’s the practical solution you can implement in days with your team that is guaranteed to equate to at least another W or more this season without changing anything else! How important could that be? Be back next week with some more new tips and tactics to get the most out of your athletes by targeting the “INSIDE” track of their nutrition! See you then!
Jeff
Filed under Sports Nutrition, Supplements by on Aug 18th, 2010. Comment.
