Basic Nutrition

This is not the advice of a professional in the field, just some observations made by a competitive athlete / coach with 35 years experience in the sport. The few things we do suggest here are generally just common sense.

Sensible Eating

As you will often hear on television the best approach to eating is a balanced healthy diet. You should try to eat at least five items of fruit and vegetables a day (strictly seven vegetables and two fruit a day are even better) and maintain a good proportion of proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Where possible try to have go for unsaturated fats (generally from plants and fish), and particularly avoid trans fats.

If you are very conscious about what you eat then aim to eat about a half of your calories in carbohydrates and a quarter in each of protein and fat. Basically, from the athletes point of view if you are being sensible you should burn off the odd cake or biscuit you eat without any trouble!

Fluid Intake

Clearly, an athlete is going to use a lot of energy and lose a lot of fluid through sweat, even on a relatively cool day. It is therefore important to drink enough fluid, with this getting more important the warmer it is. Some isotonic drinks may have benefit in terms of boosting energy, but many athletes prefer just to take on water. Nutritionalists suggest that non-active people should drink about 3-4 pints of water a day, though few do. Your urine gives an indication of your levels of hydration - if it is a dark yellow you should be drinking more. Protein shakes can be used as part of this hydration process, but you need to ensure it is right for you before doing so - they are most useful post training.

When to eat

This is actually more important than you might think - and at times can even be more important than what you eat.

If you do a tough training session, it is really important for recovery that you start refuelling very quickly after a session. This may not always seem like the easiest thing to do, as often after a tough session eating is the last thing on your mind. However, getting some carbs and protein into your system will kick start you recovery and reduce the fatigue leading into future sessions. We often recommend a simple chocolate milkshake with protein powder in it (leucine being a perfect protein for rebuilding muscle) as this contains fluid,carbohydrates and protein. It is also a lot cheaper than premade protein shakes.

After this there is what some nutritionists describe as the "golden window". This is a period of time after training when it is very important to get a full meal inside you - generally this period is considered to be 2 hours.

Prior to training it's important to be hydrated and to have enough energy. A top up snack about about an hour before training can be useful for this. It is the one time when those on a very seriously healthy diet might consider a sweet snack, so they get 100-150 calories of sugars released into their bodies ready to power them through training.

Supplementation / Vitamin Insurance

You will often hear athletes saying that they are taking this vitamin or that supplement. Whilst, these things may well be benefical, they can also sometimes be unnecessary and as they can be expensive do little more than burn a whole in your pocket.

Having said that there is an argument (particularly if you are eating on a limited budget, say as a student) of ensuring that you get a good level of vitamins with a multivitamin tablet once a day - as a kind of vitamin insurance. These can be relatively cheap (from only 2-3 pence a day) particularly if you buy own brand labels.

This is just a back up to a good diet and should not replace it. Think of it as a safety net as you would household, car or travel insurance.

There are a wide range of other supplements available (eg creatine, various proteins, beta alanine etc), which may or may not be beneficial. For more information on supplements, have a look here Supplements for Athletes

We look in more depth at all elements of nutrition in a main website sports nutrition section