Do you wish to include nutrition as a part of your personal strategy to win?
If so, this book is a must-read for you. Written by sports nutritionist Nancy Clark MS RD and Gloria Averbuch, in collaboration with Women’s Professional Soccer, Food Guide for Soccer was especially designed to help soccer players optimize their health and performance with good nutrition.
Food Guide for Soccer covers every relevant aspect in soccer nutrition, including principles for daily eating, what to eat before, during and after training/competition, weight management, hydration and supplements! All of these topics are written in a simple, practical and realistic way, so you can easily apply what you read to your personal sports diet. By doing so, you will discover a whole new level of play: you’ll feel more energized, less prone to injuries and, even more important, you’ll feel more in control of your own body.
Besides teaching you great nutritional principles, Food Guide for Soccer also includes more than 40 easy-to-prepare tasty recipes for athletes. Each recipe includes nutrient analysis for carbs, protein, fat and calories.
Food Guide for Soccer combines the state of the art of scientific research in sports nutrition with years of both authors’ experiences teaching soccer players to win with good nutrition. Soccer athletes, parents and coaches are among those who will benefit from reading this guidebook. Enjoy!
Breakfast is the most important meal of your sports-child’s day. Although sometimes eating breakfast may not seem convenient to him or her, the benefits clearly outweigh the difficulties.
Children who eat breakfast tend to:
Eat a more nutritious, lower fat diet the rest of the day;
Have lower levels of blood cholesterol;
Enjoy better success with weight control (when needed);
Be mentally alert and more productive – in school and on the field;
Have more energy to enjoy exercise either in the morning or later in the day.
Nevertheless, some young soccer players frequently skip this meal. If your child skips it too, s/he is likely to concentrate less effectively in the late morning, study less efficiently, feel irritable and short tempered, or fall short of energy for his/her afternoon soccer practice.
Excuses like “I don´t have time” actually mean “I don’t make it a priority”… But s/he should!
Did you know, for instance, that dieters who skip breakfast tend to gain weight over time, because they get too hungry and then overindulge at night!?
If your child doesn’t feel hungry by morning, s/he may have eaten too many snacks the previous night. If that’s the case, encourage nutrient-dense snacks, such as cereal with milk or oatmeal! Preferably, waking up ready to eat breakfast can become his/her priority.
On the other hand, if your little warrior’s “not time for breakfast” excuse is because of an early game or practice, there’s a solution too. Tell him/her to eat at least part of the breakfast beforehand, to get his/her blood sugar on the upswing and avoid an energy crash. Then, your hungry soccer player will eagerly finish the rest of the breakfast after his/her workout.
So what should a breakfast consist of?
First of all, bear in mind that breakfast should represent one-quarter to one-third of your child’s daily calories. For example, if s/he needs 2500kcal a day, make sure to target about 700kcal in the morning.
A wholesome recovery breakfast that combines many carbohydrates with a little protein promptly replaces the depleted glycogen stores and helps refuel and heal the muscles so they’ll be ready for the next training session.
Here are some breakfast examples:
Low-fat yogurt with cereal, orange juice and a banana;
Blender drink (piece of fruit, low-fat yogurt/skim or low fat milk and cereal);
Whole grain bread with peanut butter/low fat cheese/sliced turkey and jam plus fruit juice;
Skim or low fat milk with crackers, peanut butter and an apple;
Low-fat yogurt/skim or low fat milk with crackers, raisins and almonds/peanuts.
Notice that my first two suggestions included cereal. Cereal is a popular breakfast option because it is quick and easy to prepare, as well as rich in carbohydrate, fiber, iron and calcium and low in saturated fat and cholesterol. Also, some evidence points that cereal can be helpful for weight control.
Please realize your child doesn’t need to be seated at a table to eat breakfast. I often find myself enjoying my morning meal while walking to the train station!
Be creative. There are many ways to reach your goal of enjoying a high energy morning meal.
Recommended reading for more information:
·Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook
·Food Guide for Soccer: Tips & Recipes from the Pros (http://www.nancyclarkrd.com)
Now I want to hear from you,
Does your child eat breakfast regularly? If not, why so?
Which are his/her favorite breakfast foods?
Stay tuned!
Wishing you and your child the best health and performance ever,
Diogo Ferreira, RD
Sports Nutritionist, Lisbon, Portugal
“Promoting best health and performance through nutrition”
Children who play sports such as soccerfrequently prepare for matches with no consideration for their hydration status.
In fact, most aren’t aware of the effects dehydration (loss of body water) can have on their performance.
These include:
• an increase in heart rate, that causes needless fatigue,
• an increase in body temperature, that can endanger their health,
• an increase in perception of effort: they’ll feel like they are working harder than they actually are.
• and a decrease in motivation. They’ll want to quit.
For active kids, dehydration translates into decreased speed, technical moves, and ability to focus on the task at hand. Also, sweat losses can contribute to muscle cramping in predisposed players.
Now you may ask, how much does my child need to sweat until he feels those symptoms? Scientific research shows that a loss of as little as 1 to 2% (particularly in hot environments) of body weight during exercise is likely to impair performance! (Weight lost during a bout of exercise is primarily water.)
As so, you really must pay attention to your son/daughter’s hydration status. Teach your child to assess his/her urine color and output. If s/he urinates frequently (every 2 to 4 hours) and urine color is pale (see fig. 1) s/he is probably well hydrated. The most reliable time to check urine color is in the morning, after waking up. It will tell if s/he hydrated well the day before.
Fig.1 – Urine color chart. If the urine sample matches #3 or less in the chart, your child is well hydrated. If the urine color is #7 or darker, s/he is dehydrated and should consume fluids. (From: Casa DJ,Armstrong LE,Hillman SK,Montain SJ,Rich B, Roberts WO, Stone JA. National Athletic Trainers' Association Position Statement: Fluid Replacement for Athletes. J Athl Train 2000;35(2):212-224.)
Every athlete who aims for excellent performance must aim to be well hydrated before, during and after training/competition.
To start well hydrated, your little warrior must begin hydrating 4 hours before an afternoon game (or the day before a morning game) with 5-7ml/kg (for example, 200 to 300ml or 7 to 10 oz in a 40kg/80 lb athlete) and then s/he can monitor how often and what color is the urine passed. If the urine is still too dark two hours before the soccer event, s/he must drink another 3-5ml/kg (ex. 120 to 200ml or 4 to 7oz in a 40kg athlete), so s/he still has time to pass excessive fluids before exercise time.
To optimize your child’s hydration status during training or competition, you must estimate his/her sweat rate in both contexts, in order to replace efficiently sweat losses. To do so, you can use the following formula:
[(Pre-exercise body mass (kg) – Post-exercise body mass (kg)) + Total fluid ingestion (l)] (– Urine output (l), if the child urinated)
This tells you how much s/he sweated in the whole session (ex. 3L in a 2h session). If you divide the result by exercise time (h), you’ll have his/her sweat rate (ex. 1,5L/h or50 oz/h) calculated. With this information in hand, you’ll be able to optimize performance by fine-tuning replacement of sweat losses. You must assess his/her sweat losses in a variety of weather conditions and type and context of exercise because these influence his/her sweating.
If you prefer to do this more intuitively, just make sure s/he weighs him/herself with minimal clothing or nude (if possible) before and after exercise. His/her final weight must be neither higher nor too much lower (loss > 2%) than initial one. To achieve this result s/he must drink regularly (120-240ml or 4-8 oz every 15-20m) during training/competition. If possible in hot weather games, water should be placed along the sidelines to be consumed during breaks in play.
Practical example:
Luis Miguel is a soccer player who weighs 45kg (90 pounds) before a training session. Immediately after exercise, he weighs in again and finds he is 44kg (88 pounds) now. He lost [(45 – 44)/45] x 100 = 2,2% of body weight, so next time he should drink about one more liter (1 kg fluid) in a similar exercise session.
After exercise, the best way to recover your child’s hydration status is to drink 150% of his/her losses (ex. If s/he loses 1L s/he must drink 1,5L).
Sports drinks vs water
A sports drink is basically a mixture of water, carbohydrates and electrolytes (mainly sodium). Although advertisements make it look like we need a sports drink to even catch a bus, the reality is far from that. Sports scientists conclude that only in high-intensity events of 1 hour or longer, as well as less intense exercise events sustained for more than an hour and a half, could athletes significantly benefit from sports drinks.
If this is not your son/daughter’s case, but s/he hasn’t fueled well enough for the workout, s/he’ll feel some benefits due to the energy provided by the drink.
Sports drinks can also be helpful to recover after exercise, as I said in previous blog post. They can both re-hydrate and refuel your body.
The most rigorous criterion I suggest you to have when choosing a sports drink is the carbohydrate content. The optimum content is between 6 to 8% (i.e. 6 to 8 grams carbohydrate per 100ml). Also, make sure your child enjoys the flavor.
Attention note:
Some young players tend to over-hydrate (i.e. drink more than they lose) when water is made available. That can also be harmful! Besides the needless additional weight, drinking too much water may predispose to exercise-associated hyponatremia (i.e. sodium levels too low in bloodstream), a clinical condition characterized by symptoms that become increasingly severe and include headache, vomiting, swollen hands and feet, undue fatigue, confusion and disorientation and wheezing. In worse scenarios, low blood sodium may end in edema in the brain, coma and death.
This emphasizes the need for monitoring of sweat losses to ascertain that your son/daughter drinks neither too little nor too much fluids.
Diogo Ferreira is a Registered Dietitian who is specializing in Sports Nutrition, with experience consulting soccer and martial arts athletes. He is committed to help them achieving their best performance with sound nutritional practices.
My Linkedin profile: http://pt.linkedin.com/in/diogoalvercaferreira
