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’!