Four Priorities to set with your Athletes for their Recovery Nutrition!
Optimising your nutrition after exercise can help keep you healthy and enable you to train again while maintaining or gaining muscle mass, improving your immune function and generally feeling better.
A poor recovery diet can lead to fatigue, decreased performance and muscle soreness. It may even result in illness or injury.
Recovery strategies should be personalised for each athlete and customised based on their exercise intensity, goals, and schedule.
We've been through this, so I recognise it's a difficult journey, but you can get expert guidance from an Accredited Sports Dietitian to help you integrate individual preferences.
The following are four nutritional recovery goals:
1. Fuel Replenishment
Carbohydrate is the primary fuel used during intense exercise. Failing to keep your fuel stores replenished can lead to fatigue and decrease the training capacity of your athlete.
Failing or skipping meals can get in the way of maximising your potential during training. Furthermore, as various health problems will also arise, such as fatigue and inability to concentrate, the time between training sessions is short (<8 hours). Therefore, your athletes should consume rapidly digested carbohydrates as soon as practical after exercise.
When competing in endurance sports, focusing on replenishing carbs after your workout is essential. 1.0-1.2g is recommended per kilogram, with a little less if co-ingested with protein.
2. Muscle repair, growth, and adaptation require protein.
Incorporating a protein-rich snack into your post-workout snack will boost the muscle-building signals that exercise activates. This will help promote muscle repair, growth, and adaptation.
Food rich in protein is important for sustained periods of activity to maintain muscle mass and give you the energy you need. This is because, after exercise, protein pathways are active for hours.
3. Replace fluids and electrolytes lost through sweating.
If you want to stay healthy while working out, it's important to drink plenty of fluids. To counteract ongoing fluid losses in recovery, the American College of Sports Medicine recommends that you drink four to six times the amount of what you sweat out after exercising (about 250-350%).
Dehydration is easily predicted by just weighing yourself before and after exercising. If for example, you lost 1 kilogram during your workout, it's safe to drink 1.5 litres of water over the next 2-4 hours to keep you hydrated.
An Accredited Sports Dietitian can help athletes calculate their sweat rate, and thus individual fluid needs during and after exercise.
4. Support your athletes' immune function by revitalizing them.
Adding fruits and vegetables to your athletes' recovery meals will provide them with a wide range of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants - in other words, all their essential needs. It's good for their immune health & acts as a possible defence against free radical damage.
The POWERAMP Recovery Set Includes the following products:
- Sports Magnesium 60 capsules
- Post-Workout Drink
- Rapid Hydration (Raspberry Lemonade)
- Turmeric Recovery 60 capsules
- Everyday Fish Oil 120 capsules
Get it here: https://bit.ly/Recovery-Set
Reference:
SDA Sports Dieticians Australia
