How to Understand Sports Nutrition?

Answer 1

Sports nutrition is an integral part of athletics and one of the most important aspects an athlete and coach need to monitor. If an athlete is not consuming all the right foods, drinks and vitamins their performance will suffer drastically. Sports nutrition and research is a million dollar industry. From professional athletes to amateurs, sports nutrition is something that is helpful to learn about, understand and practice everyday.

Nutrition is important for every human being, but athletes, especially endurance athletes, need to specifically monitor what and how much they put into their bodies. A perfect example of sports nutrition and how important it is before a big event is the marathon. The marathon requires an extreme amount of glycogen. Glycogen is important and if a marathon runner exceeds their bodies limit for glycogen, the marathon runner will crash and hit the infamous ’wall’. This is refereed to as ’bonking’ in marathon lingo.

To avoid hitting the wall in the marathon, elite and amauter runners alike have found that eating lots of carbohydrates before the marathon will provide their bodies with an ample amount to carry them through most of the race, typically the first 20 miles, without any major glycogen depletion problems or concerns.

This is a perfect example of how utilizing sports nutrition can enhance performance. Sports nutrition is also important, not only on race day, but post race or workout. Many weightlifters will drink massive amounts of protein after they finish a weight lifting session to aid in the building and replenishment of their muscles. Without the necessary protein to build the muscle fibers, the athlete would not be able to build strong muscle. Instead the athlete would experience a muscular breakdown, suffering from a large amount of soreness and fatigue.

Without the proper sports nutrition athletes of all shapes, sizes and levels would fail at their respective sport. Sports nutrition is one of the most important aspects of athletics, and unfortunately one of the most misunderstood and misused aspects of the athletic world. If both coaches and athletes took the time to research and understand what goes into the human body, performance levels would increase substantially.