From Dr Josh at Gymnast Care:

So here’s the deal with practice nutrition. It’s something that gives your athlete an edge.

Practice hydration and nutrition are definitely not the base of your nutrition. The base is formed from eating the right meals throughout the day including breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, pre-workout snack, and dinner.

Without the base of great nutrition, practice nutrition is just a band-aid; but when you have great nutrition in place all day long, practice nutrition can spark a revolution of talent and performance that you never would have thought possible from your young athlete.

Because your athlete has eaten their pre-workout snack, they’re good on carbohydrates and energy for that first 60 minutes of practice. After 60 minutes, we can really start to see a decrease in the overall performance of our athlete if they don’t start getting more carbohydrates into their bodies.

Most sports, like gymnastics, basketball, football, soccer, lacrosse, and others utilizing short bursts of work, require muscle sugar (glycogen) in order to provide energy to move and perform.

When the glycogen is used up, the energy is gone, and the athlete will struggle to continue at a high level.

We have some solid strategies for you to make sure you’re maximizing your athlete’s energy throughout practice.

The first is to implement a mid-workout snack (practice snack). This one is super simple, because we only utilize fruit. It’s the only meal in our Road Map to Success that we deviate from the proteins, carbs, and fats, and we only go with carbs.

We do this because we’re trying to get nutrients to our athlete’s brains and muscles as quickly as possible, while still keeping with our standard of whole foods.

Examples of great fruit would be:

Grapes

Bananas

Apples

Kiwi

Pears

Figs

Raspberries

Blackberries

Blueberries

It’s best to eat our mid-workout snack halfway through the practice. If it’s a 4 hour practice, have the snack 2 hours in.

Practice Hydration

The best way to take in hydration during practice is to sip water throughout practice. Make sure your athlete has their water bottle available, and that they’re sipping throughout practice.

IF YOUR ATHLETE DOESN’T HAVE THEIR WATER BOTTLE AVAILABLE, THEY WILL NOT GET THE WATER THEY NEED TO SUCCEED.

Secondly, we want to be able to fill the energy gaps and we can do this with a very special hydration technique.

Utilizing a carbohydrate drink throughout practice can supplement the muscle sugar that has been lost during their short bursts of work. Our favorite carbohydrate drinks are coconut water or a mixture of 1/2 water and 1/2 juice.

A great strategy is to have water the first hour of practice, carbohydrate drink the second hour, your snack at the half way point, water the third hour, and carbohydrate drink the last hour, when your athlete is most fatigued at the end of practice.

Our athletes that have tried this strategy say they have as much (or even more) energy the last hour than they did the first.

Here’s the link again to our practice nutrition video: High Energy Practice

Have an awesome day!
Dr. Joshua Eldridge