Healthy lifestyle
Sports Nutrition
These days, competitive sports are open to everyone, at every age. You don't have to have be a former star of your high school track team to train for a 5K race as an adult. If your fitness goals include competitive sports, you need to know that you will have special nutritional needs to help sustain rigorous training, improve performance and prevent nutrient deficiencies.
High intensity workouts can result in breakdown of muscle tissue and loss of micronutrients in urine and sweat. Some athletes' activity levels, such as marathoners and triathletes, can require them to consume greater numbers of calories from carbohydrate and protein and higher levels of some vitamins and minerals than those recommended for normal, healthy individuals.
Endurance athletes may need more zinc than the 15 mg/day recommended for healthy males and 12 mg/day recommended for healthy females. Adolescent and adult male athletes tend to get about 15-16 mg of zinc daily whereas adolescent and adult females may eat a little less than 10 mg of zinc each day. Endurance athletes sometimes lose excessive amounts of zinc when they sweat several liters of water during exercise. Zinc plays a critical role in metabolism and tissue growth and repair as part of enzymes involved in these functions.
Iron, another important mineral for athletic performance, binds to oxygen and delivers the oxygen to working muscles. Iron can be found in blood, muscle and the mitochondria where ATP is produced for energy. Female athletes have been shown to eat about 11.8 - 12.7 mg/day, which is less than the RDA (Recommended Dietary Allowance) of 15 mg/day. Male athletes tend to get more iron in their diet than the current RDA of 10 mg/day.
Vegetarians are at greater risk for decreased iron stores because plant iron is not absorbed as well as animal sources. This can be avoided by trying to consume twice the RDA in plant iron, through sources such as beans, fortified cereals, wheat germ, sea weed, leafy greens, asparagus, raisins, dried apricots, prune juice, black strap molasses and watermelon. For non-vegetarians, of course, Laura's Lean Beef offers an excellent source of iron; a 4-ounce serving provides 10 to 20% of the RDA for iron, depending on the cut.
Athletes need more protein than sedentary individuals. Those participating in heavy resistance training, like body builders, need about 1.7 to 1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight to experience optimal gains in muscle. Converting this to pounds, this means a person weighing 176 pounds who participates in heavy resistance training would need to eat about 136 grams of protein daily.
Endurance athletes, such as marathon runners, cyclists and triathletes, need about 1.3 to 1.4 grams of protein for every kilogram of body weight.
Endurance Athletes
| Weight | (g) Per Day |
| 150 | 88-95 |
| 165 | 98-105 |
| 175 | 103-111 |
This extra protein does not necessarily enhance muscle mass but rather replaces amino acids (the building blocks of protein) that are burned for fuel during prolonged exercise.
Athletes need to take in more calories than sedentary individuals, and calorie intake should increase as activity levels increase to prevent weight loss. Approximately 60% of those calories should come from carbohydrates to ensure that the protein eaten is used to build muscle and not used for energy.
Whether you are a veteran athlete or an athlete-in-training, you'll likely find that your performance is enhanced when you incorporate interval training. Interval training is a technique that incorporates work and relief periods that train both the aerobic and anaerobic energy systems. Interval training allows the athlete to accomplish substantially larger amounts of exhaustive work than continuous training by preventing excessive build-up of lactic acid that can result in severe, limiting fatigue. The length and intensity of the work and relief intervals varies depending on the sport and desired outcome.
To improve your performance and reduce the risk of injury, seek out advice from experienced athletes in your field, along with coaches and trainers. Familiarize yourself with the fundamentals of adequate hydration, warm-up, stretching, injury prevention, heat and altitude stress.
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