Summer Vacation Requires Nutrition Dedication!

In just a matter of days, school will be out for summer!

I always remember as a kid, looking forward to those later days in June…from basically the first day of September! I just loved summer vacation. As an athlete though, it represented more than just the next couple of months off, it represented a tremendous opportunity.

The Summer Vacation is the best time of the year to work on improving your body in the weight room so you can come back bigger and stronger the following year. It’s the best time to work on your skills, at perhaps one of the various camps devoted to your specialty, so you can become the best technical athlete at your sport. And finally, it’s the best time of the year to develop proper eating habits that you can carry with you into the school year and beyond to support your growth (literally) into that athlete you dream about becoming.

The only problem is…most of the time this last one happens backward or even worse….doesn’t happen at all.

With the end of school also comes the end of an organized schedule for most teens. No longer is there a need for early morning wakeups, timed eating, pre practice fuel ups, etc. Instead, most teens revert to a much different summer lifestyle. Late starts to their day from sleeping in until 11am. Skipping breakfast. Eating erratically throughout the day, as meal timing is dictated more by when you and your friends actually remember to eat instead of planning to eat.

And all of this is normal….if you want to be the average teen.

If instead you want to be more, then you’re going to have to do just a bit of homework this Summer. But trust me, it won’t be that hard. As a matter of fact, it could be the easiest assignment you’ll ever have since this one is going to involve encouraging you the hungry teenager (or the one that you coach or raise) to eat!

Geez…sounds impossible huh? Kidding of course.

Well, think back to the typical school day. Again, by virtue of having to get up early to be on time for school, the issue of getting an early breakfast was not much of a challenge. You then packed a lunch for the day, hopefully a couple of snacks as well and off to school you went.

You knew when it was time for lunch because the clocks and the school bells said so. You knew when it was time for your after school snack because you only had so much time before coach blew the whistle to start practice. You knew when practice was over it was time to head home and you looked forward to a nice sit down dinner since you were starving from all the activity leading up to it. Basically, the whole day had structure.

Well, for many with the last day of school so too comes the last day of this organized schedule, and I’m saying that without it you are greatly compromising your ability to capitalize on this SUMMER OPPORTUNITY to become the best athlete you can be. If you want to take advantage of the window of opportunity then try to stick as closely as you can to the structure the school day had provided you.

Try not to sleep in. Just think, not only will this be healthier for you in the long run but you’ll actually have a longer summer vacation to enjoy! Instead of sleeping it all away you’ll have many more hours to enjoy the things that you’re not able to during the school year.

Try to pack smart snacks for your day trips. Don’t ‘wing it’ with your eating. You simply cannot rely on the fact that you’ll have access to good foods when you’re out and about with friends on camping trips, at the beach, or engaging in marathon XBOX sessions. You need to be prepared, and it can be as simple as having those ultra portable snacks handy like the trail mix, granola bars, peanut butter sandwiches, bananas, apples, etc that helped so much during the school year.

Set a time during the day for your workout. The more you randomly choose a time to workout the greater the likelihood that you’ll find reason to push it off during the summer. With no set plan in place the tendency for other more attractive options to come up and make the idea of working out sound as appealing as a sunburn, is high. During the school year your weight room time is dictated by your coaches and it’s almost easy to get your work in. Well, pretend your coach is assigning you a specific time for a specific number of days each week and just get it done. Schedule your days of play around your hour or so you will be working out. In the long run, you’ll find you miss a lot fewer workouts.

So you see, the school day (while usually not a teen’s favorite) provides much more structure than the free Summer day. While there are definitely some positives to be had from these June, July and August days (particularly when it comes to recharging the batteries after months of school), there are also negatives that can be disastrous when given a chance. Namely in its negative impact on your preparation for next season.

Remember, the greatest athletes are not made on the field. They are made off of it, behind the closed doors of the weight room, far away from the lights and the action and the brief moments that are the games. Instead, they thrive by doing the little day to day things right that together contribute to the success that others see in those shining moments of competition. If you wait until the moment of truth before you try and work on improvement, you’ll find yourself 5 steps behind already.

Don’t let that happen. Take advantage of these next few months, these moments of SUMMER OPPORTUNITY, to work on not only improving physically and technically but most importantly, on supporting this growth by maintaining that daily structure and schedule that makes it all possible in the first place.

And of course, if you need help with your athletes nutrition over the vacation months, check out the Teen Sports Nutrition Blueprint

To your health and success,
Jeff