10 Nutrition Strategies for the Big Race Day

Nutrition is often the most overlooked aspect of an athlete's training even though it is one of the most important. Properly fueling your body daily is necessary for your body to perform at its best - and it is no different the day(s) of a meet. USA Swimming posted this great article by Jill Castle about how swimmers should be eating/drinking during race days.

10 NUTRITION STRATEGIES FOR THE BIG RACE DAY

       

BY JILL CASTLE, MS, RDN

At the end of the season when you’re laying everything on the line, don’t let a misstep in nutrition or poor planning sabotage your goals. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you prepare for the biggest meet of the season:

1. Eat breakfast. Start races on the right foot by eating something first thing in the morning. Muscles and metabolism will get the carbohydrate and energy boost they need.

2. Eat at the meet. I’m not hungry, or I’m too nervous to eat. These are just two excuses for not eating at competition. Going for long time periods without food (namely carbohydrate) is a bad idea and will chip away at performance.

3. Be structured with eating. No skipping, delaying or erratic times for eating (ahem, midnight munchies). Even at the pool, space eating around events, keeping the pre-load/recovery eating cycle going. The body will perform at its best when it is fueled.

4. Don’t experiment with food. Stay with tried and true foods your body can digest and tolerate while swimming.

5. Focus on carbohydrates. These are the body’s first food resources for energy. Go for slow digesting carbs like oats, whole grain bread or bagels or starchy vegetables. When opting for pasta, hold the fatty sauces like Alfredo. Instead, go for marinara or a low-fat option.

6. Forget the fatty foods. These are best eaten later, not during competition weekends, as they will just drag the swimmer down, leaving him feeling full and sluggish.

7. Be prepared for hunger. Unexpected hunger can get the best of any athlete. Bring more food than you need. That’s better than running to the concession stand for something less-than-ideal. Remember the adage: If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.

8. Keep it clean. Important races and meets are not the time for fast food, junky snacks, sugary desserts or candy. Stick with wholesome, real food like fruit, whole grain breads and crackers, and nut butter.

9. Quench the muscles. Drink plenty of water to avoid dehydration and muscle cramping. Swimmers don’t need to get fancy with sports drinks or other sugary beverages during competition, as most races are brief.

10. Sleep. Although not a nutrition recommendation, sleep is tightly tied to allowing nutrition to do its thing. Sleep is energizing and restorative, and the time of day when muscles are in major renovation mode, healing, building, strengthening and using all that good nutrition it received during the day. Don't sacrifice sleep!

Jill Castle, MS, RDN is a childhood nutrition expert and co-author of Fearless Feeding: How to Raise Healthy Eaters from High Chair to High School (www.fearlessfeeding.com). She is the creator of Just The Right Byte (www.justtherightbyte.com), a childhood nutrition blog. She lives with her husband and four children in New Canaan, CT. Questions? Contact her at Jill@JillCastle.com.  

Our last post talked about bad eating habits swimmers should break, so this post provides 10 foods that swimmers should be eating. For young swimmers (this includes teens), it is important that they not only eat properly so their bodies can perform well, but also so that they are growing and developing in a healthy way. Athletes of all ages may be at a greater risk of being nutrient deficient, so please take a moment and read what Jill Castle suggests your swimmer should be eating! 

This article can also be found here.

10 FOODS SWIMMERS SHOULD BE EATING

       

BY JILL CASTLE, MS, RDN

The mystery behind what to eat is never-ending, partly because miracle foods are constantly surfacing while other foods fall from grace. When it comes to the growing swimmer, what to eat is important for growth and development, and also for athletic performance. Many children and teens in today’s world are missing out on calcium, vitamin D, fiber and potassium. Teens and athletes in general may be at greater risk of nutrient deficiencies if they skip breakfast, snack on nutrient-poor foods and use diets to control their weight.

Given this, here are 10 foods that will keep your nutrient intake high and your risk for deficiency low:

Nuts: All nuts are chock-full of healthy fats, fiber, protein, magnesium and vitamin E. Use them to top yogurt or cereal, or just grab a handful on the way to practice.

Seeds: Similar to nuts, seeds are full of fiber, healthy fats, magnesium and vitamin E. Eat them like you would nuts.

Ready-to-eat cereals: Cereal is fortified with nutrients such as folic acid, iron and vitamins A and E, making them a good source for these micro-nutrients. Have it for breakfast, snack, or dinner in a pinch, but beware of choosing cereal with too much sugar. Cereals with less than 8 or 9 grams of sugar per serving are best.

100% orange juice: Increasingly, you can find calcium and vitamin D- fortified OJ. Orange juice is naturally a good source of folic acid and vitamin C. Don’t guzzle it though! Orange juice can be a significant source of calories when more than a cup and a half is consumed daily.

Beans: Magical indeed! Full of fiber, protein, iron, zinc and magnesium—find ways to fit beans into your weekly (or daily) diet. Roast them for a crunchy snack, top a salad or burrito, or throw them in with diced tomatoes for a hearty pasta dish.

Low-fat cheese: An easy snack or serve it mixed into casseroles, pasta and in sandwiches. Low-fat cheese is full of calcium, potassium, and protein. 

Low-fat yogurt: “Nutrient-rich” is an understatement! Yogurt is a good source of calcium, vitamin D, potassium and protein. Go for Greek varieties if you are looking for extra protein. It’s great as part of a meal, as a snack, or dessert.

Low-fat milk or soymilk: Dairy milk is a natural source of calcium, potassium, protein and vitamin D. If soymilk is your go-to, make sure it is fortified with calcium and vitamin D. Many athletes use flavored milk (chocolate milk) for a post-workout recovery drink.

Dark-green leafy vegetables: These veggies like kale, spinach and collard greens offer iron and calcium. Pair these veggies up with foods high in vitamin C, or serve with meat to maximize the absorption of iron from the vegetables.

Orange fruits and vegetables: Loaded with vitamins C, E, A, and potassium, these help your immune system stay healthy. 

How many of these foods are you getting on a regular basis?

Jill Castle, MS, RDN is a childhood nutrition expert and co-author of Fearless Feeding: How to Raise Healthy Eaters from High Chair to High School (www.fearlessfeeding.com). She is the creator of Just The Right Byte (www.justtherightbyte.com), and is working on her next book for young athletes, called Eat, Compete & Grow. She lives with her husband and four children in New Canaan, CT. Questions? Contact her atJill@JillCastle.com.

5 Bad Eating Habits Swimmers Must Break

USA Swimming publishes great articles to help coaches, parents, and swimmers be successful in the pool. Being successful in the pool, much like being successful on the field or on the court, often requires some 'work' outside of the pool - mainly in the kitchen! This article covers some common but harmful habits swimmers need to break in order to keep themselves healthy and able to train and perform their best.

5 BAD EATING HABITS SWIMMERS MUST BREAK

BY JILL CASTLE, MS, RDN

A habit is a regular tendency that is hard to give up. When it comes to food and eating, there are good habits and there are bad ones. Good eating habits promote health, overall wellness, and may even optimize swimming performance. Bad habits, on the other hand, may get in the way of athletic performance and future potential. Here are some of the bad eating habits I see among young swimmers: 

Skipping Breakfast
It’s estimated that about 20% of kids  (9-13 years) and 36% of teens (14-18 years) skip breakfast. The reasons vary, but in the case of the swimmer, they include running short on time in the morning, not feeling hungry, or eating too much the night before, which can suppress hunger in the morning. Swimmers need breakfast, not only for revving up their engine (metabolism), but also for paying attention in school, meeting important nutrient requirements, and feeling energized throughout the day. Breakfast kicks everything in motion—the swimmers “engine,” and his brain—so skipping it is a habit that needs to be broken. Don’t be picky about a full course meal! Almost anything for breakfast is better than nothing. Try a smoothie, instant oatmeal, a handful of nuts and cereal, a bar, or even a box of flavored milk.

Light-loading Lunch 
Some swimmers are “watching their weight,” and in doing so may think it’s healthy to opt for a salad or a cup of soup for lunch, or maybe a sandwich and nothing else. This uber-healthy approach, which sounds like a good (and healthy) idea, really doesn’t work, especially if after-school training is on the horizon. Lunch is the meal that loads the swimmer’s body with essential carbs and protein (as well as other nutrients) for training. So a salad or broth-based soup won’t cut it, but a sandwich or wrap on whole grain bread served with a cup of soup and fresh fruit would be ideal.

Overeating Later (after school, practice, and late at night)
When the swimmer skips or light-loads on eating earlier in the day, he is bound to experience significant hunger, eventually. After school or practice, or even after a full dinner, hunger may rear its ugly head, and the swimmer may overeat, and perhaps even binge (eat a large amount of food in a short period of time). Overeating can cause unwanted weight gain, and if done at night, may interfere with the morning appetite, and disturb a healthy rhythm of eating during the day. Back-loading calories at the end of the day robs the swimmer’s body of needed nutrients for training and learning at school when he needs it most—during the day!

Eating the Wrong Food
Candy, sweet muffins, chocolate-coated granola bars, chips, and cookies are the wrong foods for swimmers to be snacking on, or eating routinely. Once in a while, on a non-training day, or in the context of other healthy foods is acceptable, but relying on unhealthy foods to sustain a training program or competition is silly. While these foods can fit in to the swimmer’s diet, their role should be minimal. For example, one or two regular portions of sweets can fit into the swimmer’s diet without crashing it, however, eating a chocolate chip muffin for breakfast, a big cookie and chips at lunch, popping Skittles throughout practice or competition, and finishing the day with ice cream or fried food is a bad idea, and a blossoming bad habit. Eating the right foods, and downsizing the wrong foods, is an area where many young swimmers can do better.

Forgetting Fluids
A headache, feeling tired, and a sense of hunger may be signs of poor drinking habits. True, dehydration is common among young athletes and stems from getting behind in fluid consumption. Prepping for practice takes place all day, from eating nutritious, juicy food to drinking enough water or other beverages. Some swimmers forget to drink, and play catch-up at practice, which is hard to do. Ideally, swimmers should drink fluids all day (preferably water, milk or small amounts of 100% juice), come to practice with water or a sports drink, drink throughout training, and replenish with more fluids during their recovery and the rest of the day.

Don’t let these bad eating habits curbside the swimmer’s hard work in and out of the pool!

Jill Castle, MS, RDN is a childhood nutrition expert and co-author of Fearless Feeding: How to Raise Healthy Eaters from High Chair to High School (www.fearlessfeeding.com). She is the creator of Just The Right Byte (www.justtherightbyte.com), and is working on her next book, entitled Eat Like a Champion: Performance Nutrition for Your Young Athlete. She lives with her husband and four children in New Canaan, CT. 

Read the article on USA swimming here: http://www.usaswimming.org/ViewNewsArticle.aspx?TabId=1635&itemid=6475&mid=11541

What You Need to Know About Mental Toughness

USA Swimming posted a helpful article regarding mental toughness and how parents can help foster mental toughness in their athletes  Continue reading to learn more about what exactly we mean when we talk about mental toughness with your swimmer(s), and what you can do to cultivate that mental toughness within them.

MENTAL TOUGHNESS

What is mental toughness? It’s being in control of your emotions, being poised when challenged and under pressure. It’s the ability to maintain focus and to be resilient through intimidation and being able to bounce back from adversity. Mental toughness is being self-assured and learning how to deal with the fear of failure.

What can a parent do? Don’t demand or expect certain performance levels, condemn failure or equate love with performance. Stay away from undue or harsh criticism. DO encourage and support. Reward effort, not outcome. Realize that the consequences of failure are temporary. Learn and help your athletes learn to enjoy the sport and have fun regardless of outcome.

Discourage statements (and never use them yourself) like: “What if I don’t do well?”, “I can’t blow it now.”, or “I don’t do well under pressure.” Encourage statements (and use them yourself) like: “I’m going to do the best I can.”, “I don’t have to feel pressure. I’ll just do my job.”, and “I’m giving 100 percent and trusting my training.”

This was an excerpt taken from USA Swimming’s Swim Parents’ Workshop.

See this short article on the USA Swimming website: http://www.usaswimming.org/ViewNewsArticle.aspx?TabId=2208&itemid=4249&mid=11881

How to Guide: Getting the Most Out of Your Training

Each NEON coach has stressed the importance of QUALITY training to their group, from Bronze all the way up to Platinum. "Garbage" yardage is swimming without focus - swimming without thinking about proper technique, also known as sloppy swimming. Training in this way, with sloppy swimming, does not help swimmers improve. It is important that swimmers focus on proper technique in addition to challenging themselves physically to make sure they are getting the most out of each practice they attend. Below is an article posted by USA Swimming that discusses this issue and elaborates about how swimmers can get the most out of their training. Please share this article with your swimmers - it is an immensely important aspect to their success in the water. 

PERFECT PRACTICE: GETTING THE MOST OF YOUR TRAINING

6/4/2013

BY DR. ALAN GOLDBERG//SPORT PSYCHOLOGIST, COMPETITIVEDGE.COM

RACES ARE WON AND LOST, LONG BEFORE YOUR MEETS

Most serious swimmers put in the same amount of time training each and every week. Why is it that only a select few of these athletes will end up getting more out of their practices, and as a result, improve faster and go further in the sport than the majority of their teammates? The answer has to do with HOW they practice. 

IT'S THE QUALITY OF YOUR TRAINING THAT ALWAYS COUNTS, NOT just THE QUANTITY

Diligently making every practice, each week and putting in all that required yardage by itself will not make you a champion. What will always help you take your swimming to the next level is the quality of your work. Simply put, what you put into your training is key. For example, if you go through those long brutal sets distracted, slowing down when things get hard, wishing you were elsewhere, or focusing on how much you hate this set, then this kind of “dead yardage” training will always hold you back when it comes to race time. 

However, if you train smart and you focus on all the little details while you're swimming, if you make sure your stroke is correct, you're working on integrating the changes your coach has suggested, your turns are precise, and you push yourself to keep going hard when you don't want to anymore, then you will find that you get far more out of your practices and race faster when it counts!

“PERFECT PRACTICE” IS TRAINING MENTALLY, PHYSICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY

This is the highest quality that you can train at.

The vast majority of swimmers just train PHYSICALLY

• Attend most if not all practices
• Usually make most sets
• Do dryland and weight training
• Concentration is not always on what they're doing
• Oftentimes wish practice was over or they were elsewhere 

A much smaller percentage of swimmers train both PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY

• Attend all practices, dryland and weights
• Concentrate very carefully on what they're doing while they're doing it
• Conscientious about stroke technique, starts and turns
• Make a point to integrate corrections from coaches into work 

A select few athletes use “perfect practice” and train PHYSICALLY, MENTALLY AND EMOTIONALLY

• Attend all practices, dryland and weights
• Focus very carefully on what they're doing while they're doing it
• Conscientious about stroke technique, starts and turns
• Integrate corrections from coaches into training
• Love to swim and want to be at practice
• Have an emotionally compelling, BIG goal in their mind whenever they train (That is, they regularly ask themselves, ”How is what I'm doing right now, going to help me get to my goal?”) 

FIND AN EMOTIONALLY COMPELLING REASON TO TRAIN

Swimming is a very difficult sport to do well. Ultimate success involves a huge time commitment, sacrifice and almost continuous, year-round training and the discipline to regularly push yourself outside your comfort zone. To become a champion, you must learn to tolerate a tremendous amount of pain and discomfort. In order to do this every day, you need very powerful motivation. This motivation will always come to you from your personal reasons for swimming. Swimming is much too hard a sport to do for others, i.e. your parents or coaches. The motivation for working hard must come from inside of you. You have to have a compelling, personal reason to regularly train hard. You will go much further as a swimmer and have far more success when you make a commitment to using “perfect practice” whenever you train. 

This means that at any given moment in training, when the going gets rough and a part of you wants to back down, you have to be able to ask yourself WHY you're doing what you're doing and how it will get you that much closer to your goals. When you can connect with your emotional reasons for swimming, it becomes far easier to ride out the storms of fatigue, boredom and doubt that regularly roll in over the course of a season.

As a sports psychology consultant, Dr. Alan Goldberg works with swimmers at every level. A presenter at the Olympic Training Center, swim coaches clinics and clubs around the country, Dr. G specializes in helping swimmers struggling with performance problems, get unstuck and swim fast when it counts the most. He works over Skype, providing one-on-one consultation with swimmers and other athletes around the world. Dr. G has written over 35 mental toughness training programs and books. In addition, he is a regular contributor to Splash Magazine.