ARTICLE #1 =Nutrition
ARTICLE # 2 = Stretching before
exercise
Article #3 = Understanding your Body
Fat Percentage
NUTRITION FOR SPORTS PERFORMANCE
Prepared by
the U.S. Olympic Committee Sports Medicine Council and the Swanson Center for
Nutrition
·
HOW DOES NUTRITION AFFECT PERFORMANCE
Nutrition can impact on performance in a
variety of ways. There are over 50 nutrients that your body needs on a daily
basis. Omission of any one of these over a period of time can harm your health
and hinder performance. Nutrition will not work overnight miracles such as
shaving half a second off your time, but proper nutrition throughout the year
can make a difference. By staying healthy and decreasing "down time," you will
feel better, train harder, and be in better condition. This could mean the
difference between getting faster and going slower.
·
WHAT IS THE BEST DIET FOR AN ATHLETE
There is no one perfect diet, Each
athlete is different and has individual needs; a 98 - pound gymnast, for
example, should eat differently than a 250 - pound weightlifter. The best diet
is one that keeps you well hydrated, provides adequate calories, and supplies
the 50 - plus nutrients in the needed amounts. No single food or supplement can
do this. This is best achieved by consuming a wide variety of foods on a daily
basis.
·
WHAT SHOULD I EAT TO INCREASE MY STRENGTH
The most important factor in increasing
your strength is not what you eat, but rather how you train. Strength can be
gained only after a period of progressive resistance weight training. How much
strength you actually gain depends on the intensity and type of weight
training. It is commonly thought that large amounts of protein and amino acids
are necessary to add muscle mass. Although protein is a component of muscle,
muscle is mostly water and only 20-22% protein. An adequate protein intake is
certainly important in gaining strength and muscle, but so is your intake of
other nutrients, including carbohydrate and various vitamins. Additionally, if
your calorie intake isn't adequate, the protein you eat will be used for energy
instead of building muscle tissue. The athlete who cuts back on food to lose
weight and then takes vitamin and mineral pills may be getting more than the
needed amounts of vitamins and minerals, but won't be able to increase or even
maintain muscle mass. An Adequate diet is essential to maintaining energy
levels, developing muscles, and increasing endurance and strength.
·
ARE THERE ANY NUTRIENTS THAT ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN OTHERS
FOR ATHLETES
Yes, the most important nutrient is the
one most often overlooked water! Why is water so important? Because your body
is about 60-70% water. You can go weeks and even months without certain
vitamins or minerals before noticing an effect, but without adequate water,
performance can be affected in less than an hour. Water is necessary for your
body's cooling system. It also transports nutrients throughout your tissues and
maintains adequate blood volume. Dehydration can cause your body to overheat.
Small-unreplaced fluid losses can impair performance, and large unreplaced
losses can cause heat stroke and even death. If you wait until you are thirsty
to drink, you have waited too long. During intense exercise the body's thirst
mechanism lags behind actual need. All athletes should drink water before,
during and after workouts and events.
·
WHAT ABOUT USING SPORT DRINKS FOR FLUID REPLACEMENT
Sport drinks are fine to use as a fluid
replacement after your training or competition is over; however, caution should
be used if they are consumed immediately before or during a competition. Sport
drinks contain sugar and electrolytes. Water is probably the best replacement
fluid for most athletes, although endurance athletes may benefit from the sugar
content of sport drinks. Replacement of these electrolytes is important because
they are involved in fluid balance, nerve conduction, and muscle contraction.
During exercise, water replacement is the main concern. After exercise,
electrolyte replacement is easily achieved by a normal balanced diet. Getting
enough sodium is not a problem for most athletes. At most, it only takes a few
extra shakes from the salt shaker. Potassium replacement may be a problem if
you don't eat fruits and vegetables. Citrus fruits and juices such as oranges,
grapefruits, and bananas are excellent sources of potassium, as are potatoes,
tomatoes, and milk.
·
AS AN ATHLETE, DON'T I NEED MORE VITAMINS AND MINERALS THAN
A NON-ATHLETE
Several of the B-vitamins are involved in
the process of converting food to energy, but amounts above what you need will
not speed up this process. Taking large doses of vitamins is similar to trying
to make your car run faster by putting seven spark plugs under the hood of a
six-cylinder car. Intakes above and beyond the Recommended Dietary Allowances
(RDA) are not necessary and in fact can be toxic for some vitamins. Toxicity
and other bad side effects of large amounts of several vitamins and minerals are
well documented.
·
I'M ON A HEAVY TRAINING PROGRAM; HOW MUCH PROTEIN DO I NEED
Studies have found that most athletes eat
far more protein than they need. A more common problem for athletes on a heavy
training program is that they don't eat enough carbohydrate calories. If the
body doesn't have enough carbohydrate to use for energy, then protein is used,
which means the protein isn't available for maintaining muscle mass. Protein
and or food supplements offer no advantage over protein available from foods
such as meat, milk, cheese, and eggs. In fact, research has shown that the
protein quality of many so-called high-protein supplements is highly variable
and often inferior to milk and egg protein. The body cannot store extra
protein; therefore, it must either "use it of lose it." If you eat more protein
than your body can use, the protein is broken down and part of it is either used
for energy or stored as body fat. The other part, the nitrogen part, can be
toxic to the body in excess amounts. Large amounts of protein can lead to
dehydration, stress your kidneys and liver increase the amount of calcium you
lose in your urine, and cause "gout-like" symptoms in your joints. You will
need a little more protein than if you weren't lifting weights, but that doesn't
mean you will need more than you are already eating. One additional ounce of
meat or cheese a day or an extra glass of milk will be more than enough.
·
WHAT ABOUT AMINO ACID SUPPLEMENTATION
Amino acids are the individual units of
protein, much like the individual links of a chain link fence. They have become
popular among strength-training athletes and are often taken because the athlete
has been told they will stimulate an anabolic effect, increase the rate of
muscle gain, or cause weight loss. They can be taken individually or in various
combinations. The body cannot tell the difference between amino acids in pills
or powders and the amino acids in foods. They are all metabolized the same.
Your body needs 20 amino acids to synthesize tissue protein; 9 of these must be
obtained in the diet. The most evident way to obtain these amino acids is from
the protein you get from foods. Additionally, too much of one amino acid may
hinder the absorption of another, in effect delaying the muscle-building
process.
·
WHAT IS CARBOHYDRATE LOADING
When your muscles are working they use
fat and glycogen for the energy they need. Glycogen is a form of carbohydrate.
Your body makes glycogen from the carbohydrates you eat. Between 55-65% of your
calories should come from carbohydrate. When properly performed, glycogen
loading can increase muscle glycogen levels to nearly twice normal. Maximum
glycogen stores can be achieved by following a normal mixed diet beginning the
week prior to competition. This phase is followed for 3 days and includes heavy
training. The 3 days after that consist of following a high-carbohydrate diet
combined with tapering your exercise level, with total rest the day before the
competition or event. Most athletes need not be concerned with carbohydrate
loading. Carbohydrate loading may be beneficial in aerobic sports lasting 90
continuous minutes or longer, but, even then, only for some athletes. With
heavy training day after day, carbohydrate intake on a daily basis is very
important. Low levels of muscle glycogen can result in early fatigue and
weakness, and it can take up to 48 hours for depleted glycogen levels to be
restored. Therefore, it is important to eat an adequate amount of carbohydrate
on a daily basis.
·
WHAT TYPES OF FOOD SHOULD I EAT JUST BEFORE COMPETITION
What you eat immediately prior to
competition will, in most cases, still be in your digestive tract during
competition and consequently have little effect on your performance. Most
precompetition meals provide a psychological boost rather than physical boost.
The only hard and fast rule for this meal is that it should do no harm. Because
of nervous tension, people respond differently to precompetition meals. For
some, the meal combined with tension may cause diarrhea while for others the
meal may just sit in the stomach and cause a heavy feeling. Still other
athletes can eat a heavy meal just before performing a personal best.
Experience is the best guide. Prior to competition is no time to experiment
with different foods. Eat foods and beverages you are used to. New foods can
play havoc with your digestive tract. Drink plenty of water before, after
competition and training.
NUTRITION
FOUR CLASSES OF NUTRIENTS
ARTICLE #2
FACT OR FICTION? STRETCHING BEFORE
EXERCISE WILL REDUCE THE LIKELIHOOD OF EXERCISE-RELATED INJURY.
By William Goodwin
WebSite: my.webmd.com/asmi_content/article/2798.152
WebMD/ASMI Sports and Fitness
April 27, 2000 - This is fiction. Though most people
stretch before exercise, there is no evidence that this reduces the likelihood
of exercise-related muscle injury. In fact it might do just the opposite.
Though many athletes and trainers refuse to even consider dropping pre-exercise
muscle stretching. Ola Grimsby, a world -renown physical therapy
researcher and teacher, says, "The Japanese national gymnastics team and other
prominent athletic groups ceased doing passive, static stretching more than a
decade ago. A growing body of research is beginning to prove what
observant clinicians have known for years, namely that the typical muscle
stretching protocol performed during pre-exercise does not produce clinically
meaningful reductions in the risk of exercise-related injury."
Most athletes stretch before exercising under the
assumption that they are helping to protect their muscles from muscles from
injury. Half a dozen research reports over the last decade, most recently
a study of 1,538 army recruits published in
Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, strongly suggest that the
traditional pre-exercise muscle stretching has little value in preventing
subsequent exercise-related muscular injuries.
According to Grimsby, tendons can be moderately stretched
without ill-effect, but when muscles are stretched, a reflex is activated that
produces muscle tightness. This tightness has been linked to muscle injury
and a reduction in coordination.
Grimsby suggests that before exercising, athletes warm-up
and "functionally stretch" by beginning their exercise movements at very
low intensity and resistance, and then gradually building up to normal speed and
resistance. For post-exercise he suggests doing many repetitions of the
movement used in the exercise using very little resistance. This will bring more
blood into the recently worked-out muscles.
While there is no scientific evidence that pre-exercise
stretching reduces injuries, warming up makes the tendons more flexible and
maximizes blood flow to the muscles.
Article #3
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