Reach your next level - Involve your dietitian in your training routine
No individual sport is truly individual. An athlete is never completely alone, he’s surrounded by a coach, training partners, medical team and a group of supporters and fans. One of those silent partners is a dietitian. Combat sport athletes always need to balance their nutrition between eating sufficient amounts for optimal training and recovery, but not too much, to keep their weight within reasonable limits of their weight category. One of the most important key points in this delicate balance is knowing in advance what training sessions are planned so that the nutrition intake can be balanced accordingly.
Different types of training require different types of fuel and recovery approaches, depending on the immediate and term goals of the athlete. Athletes who want to lose fat mass may benefit from doing their recovery run on a low carbohydrate availability in order to target burning fat. Other Athletes who need to gain muscle mass need to take special care of nutrition around training in order to maximize training adaptation. When athletes get sick or injured, their nutrition program needs to change to speed up recovery and prevent a decrease in performance upon returning to action.
Key points of nutrition before different types of training
Randori training: Make sure your energy levels are high. Energy for combat sports comes mainly from glucose and glycogen (sugar in the muscles), therefore a carbohydrate-rich snack before an intense training is recommended, especially if the previous meal was more than 3 hours ago. You can go for a simple sandwich with jam, for example. After training the nutritional strategy should be focused on recovery. Take some protein to recover the muscles and ingest some carbohydrates to replenish glycogen levels. Carbohydrate ingestion after training is especially important when another intense training session is planned within the next 24 hours.
Technical training: Here the strategy will depend on the intensity of the training. If you’re on a restricted calories diet and the training is not intense, you may skip the snacks before and after training.
Cardio training: The nutrition tactics will depend from person to person and on the goal of the training. Cardio for recovery can be done on relatively low energy levels, while cardio training to improve VO2 max should be combined with sufficient amounts of energy to be able to push your body to the extremes.
Gym training: The context of the training matters. Do you want to gain muscle mass, improve muscle endurance or work on explosiveness? A training targeted around muscle endurance is going to burn a lot more energy than a training where improving explosiveness is the goal. In any case to improve muscle adaptation you need to make sure to consume enough protein around this training.
Athlete Analyzer can help to make the cooperation between athletes and dietitians
run more smoothly
Athletes who use Athlete Analyzer can benefit from sharing their training routines with their dietitian. Following the training plan, intensity and knowing how the athlete actually felt in training and competition can help the dietitian to adjust and optimize the nutrition plan.
Athletes have the option to insert their daily weight and wellness status,so that possible problems can be detected immediately. All parties can comment on trainings and competitions which can makes optimizations smooth and seamless.
