The long school year is winding down. Summer is finally here! Your athletes are cleaning out their lockers and looking forward to long, lazy days without textbooks, homework, exams, or training! Wait a minute — not so fast on the training part. Yes, a break from the athletic grind — whether it’s youth soccer, youth football drills, youth basketball drills, or any other training — is well deserved, but taking the view that the off-season is part of the overall annual training cycle can pay big dividends when fall sports roll around again in a few months. So before turning your charges loose for the summer, talk to them about goals for the off-season and how nutrition fits into the plan.
A break is a must
High school athletes react differently to the summer months. There are those who slide effortlessly into flip flops, completely forgetting about working out and the fact that with each passing day they lose the fitness they worked so hard to attain. And then there are those diehards who continue to train hard day in and day out, almost as if school were still in session. Take a pass on both of those extremes. Instead, encourage your athletes to start the summer by taking a break from competing and the rigors of daily training. Taking a few weeks to let the body and mind rest and rejuvenate should be summer’s first priority. That’s not to say physical activity is off-limits, but encourage them to keep it fun and unstructured. Suggest activities that are social and not directly tied to the sport they compete in, such as hiking, biking, rock climbing, swimming, and jogging with friends. Think playing, rather than training.
The appropriate nutritional advice to offer during these first few weeks of summer is to dial back on total daily calories consumed. Body weight is a function of calories taken in and expended. When your athletes go from intense training and playoff-level competitions that typically characterize the end of the season to sudden freedom from that intensity of effort, calories expended will often drop considerably. Less-experienced athletes sometimes don’t think to ratchet down calorie intake in tandem with the drop-off in calories burned. The end result can be unwanted weight gain. Awareness of this potential pitfall and the application of a little common sense go a long way toward avoiding this problem. Practical strategies for keeping calories in balance include reducing the frequency of snacking and trimming the size of meals.
Next up: tackle an off-season goal
A couple of weeks of R&R are exactly what the doctor ordered. But for most high school athletes, a full summer of no training is at the very least a missed opportunity — and pretty much guarantees a difficult return to the rigors of high school athletics once the school year resumes. After that first couple of weeks of summer spent resting without structured training, most athletes will be ready to tackle an off-season goal that can help make them better athletes in the season ahead. In fact, the remaining 8–10 weeks of summer represent a great opportunity for them to work on parts of their game or their bodies that need extra attention. Possible goals include reducing body fat, putting on muscle mass, maintaining overall aerobic fitness, improving speed, and developing sport-specific techniques. Talk to your athletes before the school year ends and identify a realistic goal they can pursue during the summer. Come up with a general plan on how to achieve that goal, and then make sure they have the appropriate sports nutrition advice to support that plan.
Goal: trimming body fat
If you have athletes who need to reduce body fat a bit in order to get to that next level of competitiveness, summer is the ideal time to take up the challenge. Trying to lose weight during the throes of intense training or in-season competition is a recipe for failure. The body simply can’t train hard day in and day out on too few calories. In that scenario, something has to give, and usually, performances suffer and athletes start to break down and get sick more often.
The off-season is a much better time to trim body weight, because your athletes aren’t under the gun. Instead, they can cut calories and lose the weight without it detrimentally affecting performance or their health. A combination of light and moderate aerobic workouts, along with major muscle group resistance training a few days a week, will burn extra calories and provide a stimulus for muscles to remain strong. Cutting back on calories is the other part of the equation. The goal is to achieve a daily calorie deficit of about 500–750 calories every day. This should lead to a weight loss of about 1 lb (0.45 kg) per week. For example, let’s say you have a player who is weight-stable at 3,250 calories daily, but he would benefit by reducing his body fat. By cutting back his caloric intake to 2,500–2,750 calories per day, he should achieve a safe and steady rate of weight loss. For those athletes whose weight doesn’t seem to budge, have them keep a daily log of what they’re eating and in what amounts. This can help increase their awareness of what’s going into their bodies, the overall amount they are eating, and how frequently they are eating. This makes it easier to identify problem areas in the diet and places where they can cut additional calories. One culprit that packs a calorie punch is beverages. Pass along the word that cutting back on or eliminating sugared sodas, oversized fruit smoothies, and blended coffee beverages can chop a huge load off their calorie intake.
Goal: increasing muscle mass
If increasing body weight is the summertime goal, your athletes will benefit from gaining as much of it as possible as lean muscle tissue, and as little as possible as fat. To effectively accomplish this, they’ll need to give their muscles a stimulus to get bigger and stronger, and that means hitting the weights. The more muscle groups targeted during workouts, the more muscle will be primed for getting bigger. The nutritional part of the equation for increasing muscle mass is consuming adequate calories and protein, with calories being most important. Athletes interested in bulking up often make the mistake of focusing solely on protein intake, without even considering calories. To effectively put on muscle, athletes need to consume about 500 calories more than they expend every day. They do need a little extra protein as well, but most athletes get plenty of protein. In fact, timing protein intake in relation to workouts is more important than obsessing on the quantity of protein consumed. Strength training boosts the rate at which muscle tissue proteins are made, both during and after exercise. So encourage your athletes to consume 10–20 grams of protein as part of a carbohydrate/protein snack about an hour before a training session and as soon as possible afterwards. This will help ensure that they have the amino acid building blocks on hand to support the making of new muscle tissue proteins. Also, new research indicates that the amino acid leucine is particularly effective at flipping the anabolic switch and promoting muscle protein synthesis. The new PowerBar ProteinPlus
® protein bar takes advantage of this cutting-edge research by providing 30 grams of muscle-building protein, 33–35 grams of carbs, and 3.5 grams of the muscle-boosting amino acid leucine in each bar. Consuming half a bar before and the other half after working out is an easy and simple strategy for jumpstarting the muscle-building process.
Goal: losing weight and increasing muscle mass
Many athletes want the best of both worlds: They want to lose body fat and get bigger muscles. These goals are best tackled separately. The fact is that the body isn’t very good at simultaneously losing fat and gaining muscle. The solution is to first reduce body fat and then switch the focus to increasing muscle mass. Let your athletes know that trying to do them simultaneously invariably leads to a lack of success in both endeavors.
Goal: training your weakness
For many athletes, the goal for the summer is to develop a weak area of their game. This may involve some combination of aerobic training, speed work, and technique development. No matter what’s on the workout agenda, general sports nutrition principles apply. That means staying hydrated and fueled to ensure optimal results, but not overdoing it. Let your athletes know that in general for lighter workouts of less than an hour in moderate conditions, water should be adequate for hydration and they won’t need to refuel with carbs during exercise. For longer and more intense training sessions, and any time they’re working out in the heat or humidity, a sports drink such as PowerBar
® Endurance sports drink is a more effective hydration option than plain water — and sports drinks help with refueling as well. Dehydration is much more of a risk in the summer, so extra attention paid to hydration is critical. That means starting workouts fully hydrated, remaining adequately hydrated during exercise, and replacing lost fluids after training. Take time to review the following hydration pointers with your athletes:
- Start workouts fully hydrated by consuming 14–20 fl oz (400–600 ml) of water or a sports drink 2–3 hours before exercise
- Monitor hydration status before exercise by checking urine color. A light-yellow color is consistent with adequate hydration. If urine is darker, more like the color of apple juice, that’s a sign that more fluids are needed
- Stay adequately hydrated when training by consuming fluids at a rate that closely matches sweat rate. This generally requires about 13–26 fl oz (400–800 ml) of water or a sports drink every hour during exercise, preferably in smaller amounts taken frequently, such as 3–6 fl oz (100–200 ml) every 15 minutes. For a step-by-step guide to calculating sweat rate and for a personalized hydration plan, direct your athletes to the PowerBar Sweat Rate Calculator at PowerBar.com
- Measure body weight before and after workouts to gauge the net loss of fluids. Replace this fluid after training by gradually drinking 23 fl oz of a recovery beverage, sports drink, or water for every lb (1,500 ml per kg) of weight lost
- Consume sodium sources along with fluids after exercise. Rehydration will be more effective when sodium is included with the fluid and food consumed during recovery
Refueling muscles during exercise makes a difference for longer training sessions. For most summertime workouts, consuming 30–60 grams of carbohydrates per hour is recommended; sports drinks, energy bars, gels, and energy chews are ideal for this purpose. PowerBar products designed specifically for this role include PowerBar Endurance sports drink, PowerBar
® Performance Energy bars, PowerBar
® Fruit Smoothie Energy bars, PowerBar
® Gel, and PowerBar
® Gel Blasts™ energy chews.
Recovery is important, because it’s when athletes make the gains from their training — but help your athletes effectively navigate recovery. Carbohydrates help restore muscle fuel levels, protein helps with the repair and building of muscle tissue, and fluids plus sodium help with hydration. For shorter, light-to-moderate workouts, athletes will generally fully recover within 24 hours on regular meals and fluids and don’t need to do anything special to speed the recovery process along. For tougher workouts and when recovery needs to be especially rapid, encourage your players to consume carbohydrates with a little protein as soon as possible after working out, and to wash it down with fluids. Encourage them to keep the fluids and carbs coming to rehydrate and refuel. Products such as PowerBar
® Recovery beverage and PowerBar
® Recovery bar are convenient options that help make sure your athletes get the proper jump on recovery after exercise.
Sports nutrition help
For a personalized Sports Nutrition & Training Plan, have your athletes log on to
PowerCoach™ for their everyday eating plans, as well as information about what to do before, during, and after training or competing. If your athletes have more serious nutrition challenges, the off-season is a great time for them to seek the advice of a specialist in sports nutrition. Visit
www.scandpg.org and look for a sports dietitian with the credentials RD, CSSD.
Have a great summer!
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