Nutrition is becoming introduced into the school curriculum around grade four.
Unfortunately, the average adult has a lack of understanding when it comes to eating healthily. And really, it’s nobody’s fault other than social media and its false accusations. But the truth is, we are disoriented by FAB diets that are creating bad relationships with food!
So how can we relay the correct information to our young athletes about how performance can slingshot performance by something as simple as eating right?
When hockey got seriously competitive for me in my late teens, I hired a trainer to help with my performance.
Here is a simple piece of advice! If you are looking to improve something like nutrition. Find a specialist or someone who understands how to get the most out of their athletes.
I did the complete opposite. I went to an amateur bodybuilder when I was 17 years old. And in result I gained 30 lbs in 3 months with the Hypertrophy style of training.
Absolutely ZERO benefits for hockey training!
But as a teenager, I had no, and my parents could barely tie my skates when I was first starting.
Replenish Glycogen Stores
When athletes begin to practice every day, reloading on muscle glycogen becomes equally important as on-ice training. You can not have one without the other.
Not eating enough carbs will prevent muscles from recovering before your next workout session, and prioritizing muscle recovery is a must if looking to perform your best!.
There is no way to have adaptation without recovery.
And without proper recovery, we can cause so much damage to the muscles, forcing athletes to take a couple of weeks off.
There are many ways to cause plateaus, and I can guarantee you by not eating enough carbs. Athlete plateaus will be more frequent, and adaptation will be nonexistent.
The more carbs you can eat, the more strength, recovery, and performance will develop.
When cutting carbs completely out of our diet, you will reduce the chances of any recovery that will support muscle adaptation.
Your body then will reduce anabolic signaling, making a drop in performance more likely to happen.
Calories, carbs, and water intake are the three sources of muscle recovery.
Not eating enough carbs that support your training will lower your muscle glycogen. Driving up fatigue in the muscles and triggering catabolic activity.
Because of this, catabolic activity will release energy at a much slower rate, causing the feeling of tiredness and reducing the chance of recovery.
When complex carbohydrates make up a majority of daily sugar intake, it helps lower body fat percentage and could reduce the risk of diseases.
Of the three macronutrients, carbs have the highest effect on recovery.
Even higher than protein!
When you work out, you deplete muscle glycogen stores coming from carbohydrates.
When Is Best Carb Timing?
After an intense game, muscle cells are starving and ready to absorb like a vacuum, sucking in as much sugar as possible to restore their glycogen contents.
Processed carbs, like dextrose or sports drinks, should be drunk immediately after your workouts for faster absorbing glycogen into your muscles and start the muscle repair process faster.
Eating a lot of your daily carb intake within 4-5 hours after your games will give you the best chance of seeing a faster recovery.
Intensifying your ability to drive up your anabolism. Helping to perform at high levels.
If you’re unable to eat the recommended carb intake in your recovery window after a practice or game, the next best thing would be to graze throughout the day.
A consistent amount of carbs during the day will help release just the right amount of carbs that your body requires for energy and recovery.
Carbs Help The Immune System
Too sick, too tired or too run down will never allow anyone to achieve elite performance!
Not enough carbs open the gateway for distress, leading to a depressed immune system becoming more sensitive to getting the flu or feelings of fatigue.
Carb intake will regulate how much cortisol hormone is released. Helping aid in both physical and psychological recovery.
Staying relaxed will help keep cortisol levels lower and testosterone higher. Making it very likely to see maximum performance.
Exercise is a great way to trigger endorphins that make you feel good and reduce stress. However, to adapt, you need to cause stress to the body.
For that reason, training needs to reflect how many stressors each athlete are faced every day.
It doesnt matter if exercising in the gym or skating on the ice. All forms of stress will activate the hormone cortisol.
When stressed, cortisol hormones are high, and testosterone hormones are low. When the body is in this state, it will be harder to recover and more unlikely to perform.
Exercising is causing physical stress too! This asks the question, how much off-ice training should we do?
Leave off-ice adaptation to the off-season and train at maintenance during the season. Doing so will help avoid overreaching, prevent illness and plateaus.
Complex Carbs VS Simple Carbs
Two types of Carbohydrates come from different kinds of sugars.
In the average adult or child, 50% of our daily intake of carbs consists of simple sugars or simple carbohydrates.
This number should be no less than 10% of your daily carbohydrate daily intake.
What are simple Carbohydrates?
Simple carbs absorb quickly into our bloodstream, causing insulin levels to rise in order to compensate for the drastic change.
These simple carbs are;
- -fruits
- -Dairy
- -cake
- -candy
Eating fats with carbs will slow the rate at which energy filters through the body. This is a good thing when eating simple carbs. However, fats combined with complex carbs will slow the rate of ATP release to an unwanted amount.
Complex carbohydrates will aid in weight loss, continue to give you the
energy, and more importantly, will feed your brain the nutrition it needs to function.
Here is an example of complex carbs,
- whole grain
- Bran Cereal
- Wild Rice
- Quoina
- Sweet potato
- pasta
Eating too “clean” with only unprocessed carbs can exceed daily fiber intake recommendations. Leading to nutrition loss and gas intestinal distress.
Try to mix it up with some simple carbs, especially around your workout slots when your muscles are like a sponge and ready to absorb all the glucose they can get.
How Many Carbs Should An Athlete Eat?
Everyone is different when it comes to asking how many carbs should I eat? A 300lb athlete will need a sufficient amount of carbs compared to a 100lb athlete.
Someone training for strength and power will need a different amount of carbs when compared to some training for endurance training.
For that reason, you need to look for relative values related to your activity level. And stay away from a generic number like 50 grams of carbs after a workout.
Having a relaxing Netflix and chill day will not require as many carbohydrates.
The muscle damaged from higher-intensity training can prevent muscular glucose uptake and glycogen synthesis. And will require more carb intake on both training and non-training days.
For example, athletes training 2 hours plus a day will require higher carbs. Even on lower activity days to fully replenish their glycogen to prepare their body for upcoming training and help promote recovery on the days off.
Slightly overeating carbs will be the most beneficial to recovery while eating enough calories and protein. Not fully recovering your muscles before your next game by not eating enough could result in higher fatigue levels.
So how many carbs should I eat in a day?
By the time an athlete hits their teenage years and is starting to take things seriously.
Anywhere from 3-4 grams of carbohydrates per pound of body weight is required to perform at an elite level.
Conclusion
Not eating enough carbs will prevent muscles from recovering before your next workout session, and prioritizing muscle recovery is a must if looking to perform your best!
There is no way to have adaptation without recovery.
The more carbs you can eat, the more strength, recovery, and performance will develop.
Processed carbs, like dextrose or sports drinks, should be drunk immediately after workouts, allow faster absorbing glycogen to your muscles, and start the muscle repair process faster.
Eating a lot of your daily carb intake within 4-5 hours after your games will give you the best chance of seeing a faster recovery.
Anywhere from 3-4 grams of carbohydrates per pound of body weight is required to perform at an elite level.
Staying relaxed will help keep cortisol levels lower and testosterone higher. Making it very likely to see maximum performance.