Dave Ellis, RD, CSCS, PBSCCS Advisory Board Member, Colorado Springs CO

Dave Ellis is an accomplished Sports Dietitian and President of Sports Alliance, which provides consulting services to athletics and the food industry.  Dave has earned a reputation as a pioneer and leader in the field of applied sports nutrition and is celebrating his 25th year of practice athletics in 2006.   As the Director of Performance Nutrition support services at the collegiate level (20 years combined – Nebraska and Wisconsin Universities), Ellis orchestrated the most highly evolved performance nutrition and body composition support service models in the country.  Dave also Chairs the Nutrition, Metabolism & Body Composition Special Interest Group of the National Strength & Conditioning Association (NSCA) and is an advisor to the Professional Baseball Strength & Conditioning Coaches Society (PBSCCS) Advisory Board, USADA and the Taylor Hooton Foundation.-ed

The second step revealed how carbohydrates are an important part of fueling tactics.  Also presented was the fact that all carbohydrates are not created equal.  In nutrition you have to think about the meals at home and on the road, and be involved with keeping a team or your athlete fueled throughout the year.  It becomes a tactical experience of management.  Fueling tactics is a three-step system.  Every time we write a menu, whether we’re eating at home or on the road, these three steps are accomplished with regard to the food items offered at the meal.   Before moving to step three be sure to review the information presented in step two.  Fueling tactics is all about supporting the athletes through the rigors of the day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month training.  If the athletes have less down time due to illness, better energy levels and faster rates of recovery they will have the potential to outwork the competition.  Smart work, and more of it.

This is the step that most Americans are dialed into with the new food labels that focus on fat grams.  Fat has been focused on because it yields about twice as many calories as carbohydrates or protein, not to mention the well documented relationship with heart disease and some forms of cancer.  That is why Americans have been trying to cut fat by selecting leaner protein sources.  We have classified protein sources as “Best Choice Proteins” if they have 10 grams of fat or less per serving while “Third Choice Proteins” have over 21 grams of fat per serving.

Choosing Protein Sources

On active days athletes have more room in their diets to eat a higher fat protein source from Second or “Third Choice Proteins”. On inactive days athletes who are trying to lower their calorie intakes predominately stick with “Best Choice Proteins”. We typically avoid slow digesting Third Choice Proteins at pre activity meals and instead stick with smaller servings of faster digesting “Best Choice Proteins” that are not highly spiced or smoked.

In addition, we typically eat our last meal two to four hours before intense workouts.  Athletes in training have higher protein requirements and need to distribute a variety of protein sources throughout the day.  To make it easier for an athlete to understand how much protein to eat, we have.gunnertechnetwork.comeloped a table that illustrates how much solid animal protein, dairy and vegetable protein they need on a daily basis.  Many of our male athletes tend to over consume animal protein sources and lack the diversity we are looking for from dairy and vegetable proteins like beans or soy protein isolates.

Vegetable Alternatives

The best quality vegetable proteins come from beans, primarily soy beans.  The health benefits of soy protein are quite unique and varied when compared to animal and dairy proteins.  The amino acid profile is also well suited for athletes as it contains a

high concentration of branched chain amino acids, glutamine and arginine.  This critical cluster of amino acids keeps showing up in research that looks at the protein requirements of hard working populations.  The high digestibility of soy protein isolates makes them the most popular way to get bean protein vs. dealing with the combustible nature of whole beans.

Protein Timing

The reason we ask athletes to distribute their protein intake among these three sources throughout the day is to help keep our athlete’s capacity for work high, while helping the efficiency of recovery.  We all know what it feels like to skip meals, then over eat later.  We feel like we need to take a nap, like after eating at Thanksgiving.

Starving all day and then over eating at night will not only lower your energy level, but also set your body up to store fat more efficiently.  Athletes are better off eating smaller amounts of food more frequently to avoid energy lows, while continually supplying the raw materials into the blood necessary for the never ending recovery process that athletes endure.

Putting it all together

All the menus we write for our athletes offer a variety of foods from each of these three steps.  To make it easier for our athletes to select foods from all three steps we actually have three separate buffets.  We group and merchandise Step #1 food first in the buffet, Step #2 foods second and Step #3 foods in the last.  Foods are also labeled so the athletes can see exactly what they are getting with regards to being a good source of vitamins A,C or E or a best, second or third choice carbs or protein. This approach also makes it easy for parents to pull together pregame meal buffets by assigning some parents one item from each step and then building a buffet in order.  Amazingly enough, just the order athletes see the food in a buffet can impact the quality of the meal they build even if they have learned these Three Winning Steps on the Performance Meal Guide Poster.

Maybe it is now easier for you to see the shortfall that constantly eating from vending machines or fast food drive throughs can create for athletes. A number four, at the drive thru diet, just isn’t going to cut it on a daily basis.  Take the time to use the Three Winning Step Shopping List so you can build healthier meals at home or pack them to go.

Article provided by Performance Conditioning Baseball/Softball www.performancecondition.com/baseballsoftball the Official Publication of the Professional Baseball Strength and Conditioning Coaches Society

Dave Ellis, RD, CSCS, PBSCCS Advisory Board Member, Colorado Springs CO

Dave Ellis is an accomplished Sports Dietitian and President of Sports Alliance, which provides consulting services to athletics and the food industry.  Dave has earned a reputation as a pioneer and leader in the field of applied sports nutrition and is celebrating his 25th year of practice athletics in 2006.   As the Director of Performance Nutrition support services at the collegiate level (20 years combined – Nebraska and Wisconsin Universities), Ellis orchestrated the most highly evolved performance nutrition and body composition support service models in the country.  Dave also Chairs the Nutrition, Metabolism & Body Composition Special Interest Group of the National Strength & Conditioning Association (NSCA) and is an advisor to the Professional Baseball Strength & Conditioning Coaches Society (PBSCCS) Advisory Board, USADA and the Taylor Hooton Foundation.

In nutrition you have to think about the meals at home and on the road, and be involved with keeping a team fueled throughout the year.  It becomes a tactical experience of management.  You have to really be able to look into the future and see how the team is moving and where they’re moving and have a bit of an instinct to make the best recommendation to get them well-fed and hydrated to and through the ensuing competition and the training that comes before.  So, fueling tactics as a topic really makes a lot of sense for the applied sports nutritionist, somebody who really works in an applied setting with athletes, becoming a tactician to some degree.  Subsequently, that’s how the idea of fueling tactics began.

Philosophies Behind Fueling Tactics

Fueling tactics is a three-step system every time we write a menu.  Whether we’re eating at home or on the road, these three steps are accomplished with regard to the food items offered at the meal.  Educationally, the athletes are taught how to selectively think about these three steps, evaluating their plates and trays as to how well qualitatively they have done in selecting a meal that satisfies these three steps.  To make it easier, we have divided the foods at our training tables so that they are merchandised in three separate buffets which distinguish each of these three steps.  That is a tactic which makes it easy for us to see who’s got room for improvement in their eating habits rather than having to get the athletes write down what they’re eating.  By watching them use the three buffets you can see the weaknesses in their diets.  It becomes obvious and you are literally doing online quality management, doing dietary assessment based on just the kinetics of their moving through the three buffets.  That is necessary in a situation where you are dealing with a large number of athletes who are eating with the repetitious nature that they do in collegiate athletics.  Stopping and getting dietary recalls for the amounts these individuals eat is very cumbersome, so this makes our initial assessment process on a qualitative basis of what they are eating simple.

It is easy for us to target what the weaknesses of the athlete are as far as their diets and eating habits and then start working on those individual issues as well as those involving the overall food supply, which keeps the diverse number of international athletes that we have happy, which is not easy.   Fueling tactics is really about food, and making it simple for people to understand the complexities of eating in a system that is one, two, three as far as its simplicity.  It has really worked well and we have had a lot of people emulate it over time.

Downloading Training Table Principles for Coaches and Parents 

Once you have a chance to review the simplicity of the three step fueling tactics you will see just how often we come up short when defaulting to the food supply that surrounds us daily.  It is not uncommon for us to see better eaters from families who still eat together and have some structure at home vs. those who default to the drive through.  So it is important for parents to understand this approach to eating so they can shop and build meals that fit the bill at home.  It would even be helpful to play a bit of a game by having family members try and classify which foods apply to each of the three steps.  It will very important for parents and coaches to instill in the minds of the young athletes that just because everyone around them is defaulting to the drive through doesn’t mean it is the right thing to consistently practice, especially for a highly stressed athlete.  In addition it is a good idea for a group of parents to organize a rotating schedule where you are assigned to bring certain items from the three-step philosophy in an effort to provide pregame meal and if playing in a tournament, just as importantly, a post-game meal.  Optimally we look to eat pregame meals about 3-4 hours before competition.  Quite often in amateur athletics the ability to provide this level of structure can be limited by demanding schedules and limited resources. Hopefully, between the exposure at home and with sports the athletes over time will really start reaping the benefits that nutrition has for them.  This is only possible however with the consistent application of these three fueling tactics.  Just focusing on the meal before competition is really not going to get it done.  Fueling tactics is all about supporting the athletes through the rigors of the day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month training.  If the athletes have less down time due to illness, better energy levels and faster rates of recovery they will have the potential to outwork the competition.  Smart work, and more of it.

Step One-Stress Reduction Through Natural Sources of Vitamin A, C, and E

The first step in fueling tactics is that we want people to incorporate fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds into their meals.  What we want from these foods are natural sources of antioxidants which are found in abundance in fresh food.   These foods are loaded with natural antioxidants like Vitamin E in nuts and seeds, Vitamin C in fruits and some vegetables, Vitamin A in the form of caratenoids that we get from vegetables and some fruits and a host of compounds called bioflavanoids with similar antioxidant properties.  Those are all nutrients that are known to have antioxidant properties, and antioxidants are things that help scavenge reactive oxygen and nitrogen species called free radicals.  These nasty things are by-products of stress.

What most people don’t understand about hardworking athletes is that they are a healthy population, but they are under tremendous stress, the most obvious being the physical work they endure on a daily basis as a result of their training.  The metabolic by-product of their hard work is going to produce an insult of free radicals.  If we don’t have a diet that is adequate relative to the work load in these antioxidants from these good sources of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, then we are going to have an athlete who is more vulnerable to the cumulative stress of their training, which begins to degrade the integrity of tissue, and that breaks down on a functional basis.  First this happens peripherally in the muscle doing the work as a natural start to the inflammatory signaling process that initiates healing. If the insult is too great and too frequent that results in a systemic response that is indicated by the monocytic production of cytokines which can lead symptoms characteristic of overreaching, overtraining and a compromised immune status. It’s the natural inflammatory process that can potentially go too far.  Factors that are indicative of who is more prone to suffer a systemic inflammatory insult definitely involves controllable factors such as diet and lifestyle.

What we see as the first manifestation of a weak fruit, vegetable, nut andseed eater is that they get upper respiratory illnesses quite easily.  This is very common to athletes.  If they are under stress and not eating these foods, one of things that is affected is their immune system.  It knocks their work capacity down and it knocks them out of training and academic participation, which always puts them behind.  We can’t afford that especially in the off season when there are small windows for adaptations.  Some sports have only one annual widow of opportunity for adaptations for off season gains.  If that athlete is sick half the time, I can promise you they will fall significantly behind over the course of their career.  That could be the difference between being first, second or third on the depth chart, not making the team at all or losing your scholarship.  Athletes cannot afford to have unnecessary downtime because of a vulnerable immune system.  Stress is not only metabolic work, it’s also affected by environmental conditions.  Heat, cold, pollution and environmental stresses all contribute.  If an athlete trains in a heavily polluted area, that is also another stress source.  Visual distractions and loud noises can also contribute, such as being in a tournament situation.  You also have metabolic and emotional stresses.  Athletes who are worried about their position on the depth chart and maintaining their scholarship, ensuing competitions, academics (especially at the end of the semester), all are stressor situations that produce these free radicals.  In addition, they are human  beings and have stress in their personal lives.  Athletes have very high levels of stress that can come from all angles.  It can be overwhelming and build up over time during the long grind of the season.  The athletes who did not grow up eating fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seed and who express a greater amount of stress-inflammatory response are definitely more vulnerable when a virus makes it’s way through a campus.  For those who are doing the three-step dietary program, especially step one hopefully we can minimize the down time.  Being taken down for a day or two is much better than missing a week or more.

Vitamin A, C and E Supplements

In a pinch, you might be able to reduce the stress of not having fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds in the diet by taking supplements.  But in the long run, you never want to bank replace fresh food form sources.  There is so much going on in these foods we don’t understand physiologically and biochemically.  No matter how sophisticated the dietary supplement is, it most likely lacks something that exists in our food supply.  Also, anytime

food is canned or frozen for a long time, the nutrient yield diminishes.  Fresh foods require shopping, cooking, chopping up, etc. but are worth the work considering all the nutrients they bring into our diet.  This is a return to the times when some shopped for the family weekly and people ate at home together as a family.  We have become dependent on a ready-to-eat food supply that tolerates little loss of profit due to spoilage of fresh produce.  Vendors are more likely to sell foods that they can pull from the freezer prior to cooking.

All stressed people could benefit from some higher standards when it comes to step one.  Athletes for sure need to have higher standards because of the stresses they endure, and that is why there are training tables.  But don’t worry.  You can do this at home at some restaurants, and even some fast-food establishments, like a sub shop.

Eating Practices

Breakfast is typically a good time to get the sources of fresh fruits.  We try and get our athletes to lean toward those fresh fruits as sources of Vitamin C, particularly those heavily pigmented fruits, such as cantaloupe and tangerine, which also have Vitamin A.  Because most people don’t find nuts and seeds palpable in the morning, it’s a bit harder to get that Vitamin E intake.  For lunch, salads and sandwiches are appealing.  Dark greens are desirable, as are nuts and seeds on a salad.  Also, the oils from the salad dressing are excellent sources of Vitamin E, so there is such a thing as good fats.  For dinner, cooked vegetables are available to the athletes for a source of Vitamin A activity.  Dark (red, green, orange) pigmented vegetables, such as squash, cooked greens, asparagus and fresh snap beans.  Athletes love the nuts and seeds as quick and healthy snacks en route to  class.  This brings me back to my point that not all fats are bad.  The fat-o-phobia among Americans these days has left the athletes vulnerable to not taking in enough of the good fats listed under the vitamin E sources on the three step poster.  Athletes have a tremendous potential to dispose of calories from monounsaturated vegetable fats so don’t shy away from them. Sunflower seeds are the most concentrated Vitamin E source and like fruits are portable, so they are easy to eat on the go.

We are more likely to have success getting our worst fruit and vegetable eaters to try watermelons and tangerines first.  Jumping right to the tomatoes may be a bust.  But if they can start eating soups, marinara sauces and salsa, they can eventually move up the more heavily pigmented vegetables that are so rich in antioxidants. For a full list of foods high in vitamins A, C and E refer to the accompanying step one of the performance meal guide poster.  You will see a list called “High Priority Sources of A & C”.  These foods deliver a good source of both antioxidants from one food so they are a priority for the athlete who is just learning to eat these foods. For the chronically training athletes, we fortify antioxidants into the sports drinks as they are training.  This is a fueling tactic that yields antioxidants into the blood stream relative to the stress insult.  The more stress the athlete is under, the more consistently they should fulfill step one when eating.

Article provided by Performance Conditioning Baseball/Softball www.performancecondition.com/baseballsoftball the Official Publication of the Professional Baseball Strength and Conditioning Coaches Society

Dave Ellis, RD, CSCS, PBSCCS Advisory Board Member, Colorado Springs CO

Dave Ellis is an accomplished Sports Dietitian and President of Sports Alliance, which provides consulting services to athletics and the food industry.  Dave has earned a reputation as a pioneer and leader in the field of applied sports nutrition and is celebrating his 25th year of practice athletics in 2006.   As the Director of Performance Nutrition support services at the collegiate level (20 years combined – Nebraska and Wisconsin Universities), Ellis orchestrated the most highly evolved performance nutrition and body composition support service models in the country.  Dave also Chairs the Nutrition, Metabolism & Body Composition Special Interest Group of the National Strength & Conditioning Association (NSCA) and is an advisor to the Professional Baseball Strength & Conditioning Coaches Society (PBSCCS) Advisory Board, USADA and the Taylor Hooton Foundation.

The first step discussed revealed how stress reduction through natural sources of vitamin A, C, and E could be accomplished in the metabolic mix of proper athletic nutrition.  Also presented were the philosophies behind fueling tactics.  In nutrition you have to think about the meals at home and on the road, and be involved with keeping a team or your athlete fueled throughout the year.  It becomes a tactical experience of management.

Fueling tactics is a three-step system.  Every time we write a menu, whether we’re eating at home or on the road, these three steps are accomplished with regard to the food items offered at the meal.   Before moving to step two be sure to review the information presented in step one.  Fueling tactics is all about supporting the athletes through the rigors of the day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month training.  If the athletes have less down time due to illness, better energy levels and faster rates of recovery, they will have the potential to outwork the competition.  Smart work, and more of it.

Carbohydrate Nutritional Principle to Live By

There is no doubt of the preferential role that carbohydrates play as high energy foods for hard working muscles and that storage forms of carbohydrate in our muscle are limited when compared to body stores of fat.  Outworking the competition starts at practice and carbohydrates are going to play a critical role in helping you with the quality of your workouts.  You don’t just try to eat right the day of competition.  In fact, we make it a rule to not try anything new just before a competition.

To help make sure that we have enough carbohydrate to do work and then recover from that work we teach our athletes, “When building meals before and after activity try to eat about half the food on your plate from a variety of carbohydrates.”

This principal should not be compromised when the quality of  performance counts.  But when an athlete is not working out, on off days or during breaks between seasons, do they need to eat the same way as they do on an active day when the quality of their performance is being monitored?  The answer is no.  Something has to give to lower the athlete’s calorie intake to correspond with their lower calorie output. We teach our athletes to reduce their total carbohydrate intake at meals when not active so we can give fat a chance to contribute as an energy source to a greater degree. Fat is best suited to keep pace with energy demands when idling about on inactive days.  If we eat half the foods on our plate from carbohydrates on inactive days our bodies will preferentially burn the carbohydrate over fat even though fat could have predominantly met our energy needs of an idle day of

just hanging out until our next practice.

Third Choice Carbohydrates Hidden Problems

The metabolic mix changes.  The carbohydrates we ask our athletes to reduce from their intake on inactive days are the fast digesting ones, classified in the accompanying chart as “Third Choice Carbs.” These are low fiber or high sugar foods that send your blood sugar soaring which, if done frequently on inactive days, can result in some very unhealthy consequences starting with body fat accumulation and later in life even increase the incidence of diabetes and heart disease.

Because most carbohydrates are by nature are low in fat and food labels focus on fat, many Americans have fallen prey to the idea that grazing on low fat-high carbohydrate foods between meals, then eating high carbohydrate meals every day, is the way to go.  In reality they have left themselves exercise dependent to significantly mobilize their own fat stores for energy.  This is one of the reasons why Americans are eating less fat than ever and yet are fatter than ever.  We want our athletes to learn how to eat slower digesting carbohydrates that we classify as “Best or Second Choice” first when building a meal and let the “Third Choice” carbs into the mix when the demand for energy is at its highest – before and after activity.  When we turn the thermostat up at practice or on game day do not compromise your carbohydrate intake.  If at the start of the preseason the athlete is overweight and you have to compromise your calorie intake to manage weight to maintain take this approach:

- keep your carbohydrate intake low all day on off days (maybe 1-2 small servings of best or second choice carbohydrate with each meal.)

-early in the work week (Monday and Tuesday) increase carbohydrate intake to half the foods on your plate or tray at the post workout meal only.

- from mid-week on gradually increase the carbohydrate intake at the pre activity meal up to half the foods.

- be liberal with your carbohydrate intake at all meals and snacks 24 hours prior to competition.

When athletes are up-tight on game day they deplete carbohydrate at a faster pace than normal, so limiting carbs before, during or after competition is not advised.  Never take it upon yourself to cut calories in season from carbohydrates on active days until you discuss the situation with your nutritionist, coaches or trainers.  If they agree it is necessary then at least they will understand you may be dragging early and mid-week until you get your carbohydrate intake back up for the ensuing weekend training, competition or any physical testing.  If you take care of business in the off season in regard to major changes in your body composition, like gaining muscle or losing body fat, you won’t have to do anything in season that will compromise your ability to compete at practice.

To summarize, we have more latitude to eat “Third Choice Carbs” at meals before and after activity. This is not to say you can never have an ice cream cone after dinner on an inactive day, or that you can’t have a piece of hard candy late in the afternoon when you are feeling fatigued on an idle day.  Moderation and small amounts are the keys to remember with “Third Choice Carbs.” on inactive days.  Just promise me that on inactive days you will not live off of high sugar cereals, bagels, pretzels and soft drinks

with the idea they would not make you fat because they have low fat grams on the label.  Be sure to watch for the third and final step in proper fueling tactics for the athlete.

Article provided by Performance Conditioning Baseball/Softball www.performancecondition.com/baseballsoftball the Official Publication of the Professional Baseball Strength and Conditioning Coaches Society

Dave Ellis, RD, CSCS, PBSCCS Advisory Board Member, Colorado Springs CO 

Dave Ellis is an accomplished Sports Dietitian and President of Sports Alliance, which provides consulting services to athletics and the food industry.  Dave has earned a reputation as a pioneer and leader in the field of applied sports nutrition and is celebrating his 25th year of practice athletics in 2006.   As the Director of Performance Nutrition support services at the collegiate level (20 years combined – Nebraska and Wisconsin Universities), Ellis orchestrated the most highly evolved performance nutrition and body composition support service models in the country.  Dave also Chairs the Nutrition, Metabolism & Body Composition Special Interest Group of the National Strength & Conditioning Association (NSCA) and is an advisor to the Professional Baseball Strength & Conditioning Coaches Society (PBSCCS) Advisory Board, USADA and the Taylor Hooton Foundation.

For those who are ill prepared for the workload that comes with spring training you can add the smell of analgesic rub to the list of aromas in the air around camp.  Inevitably many baseball athletes are going to wait until the last minute to start working out for spring training which results in all the problems you would expect when you do too much too quickly!  Unfortunately for some the insult of all this work on an ill prepared body can result in injury that can compromise their ability to compete at their peak for the better part of the first half of the season.  You can bet that you will only get one of those passes in your career at the collegiate or professional level before they find someone that is not a chronic injury problem.  For some the problem is even more severe as we have seen massive muscle injury called ramdomyolysis that can result in kidney failure and sadly, even death with dehydration and heat injury.  So here are some fundamentals that you need to keep in mind as you dial up your training just before and during spring training:

1) A poorly fueled muscle is a bad shock absorber!  Every time you sprint to field a ball and put on the brakes when you get a glove on the ball you are generating a great deal of what we call eccentric force in the muscle and this is where most of the damage occurs in sport.  When that muscle lengthens in a rapid fashion the muscle and joints are trying to amend all the forces generated during acceleration and if you are not ready for these rapid eccentric loads you can bet this is where you will injury yourself, especially late in the day after dozens of similar reps.  The odds of injury go up in a very big way when that muscle is improperly fueled!

2) A dehydrated muscle is an acidic muscle that is stiff and won’t relax like it should between reps on the field.  So you had better make sure you are drinking fluids before you arrive at the ballpark.  Think of it as hyper hydrating to help ensure that you don’t fall behind before the daily reps on the field start.  By weighing yourself at the start and end of each practice (in the buff) you can determine how good a job you have done staying hydrated during practice.  This is important because most of us just don’t have the drive to drink at the same pace we are sweating, especially when the weather is hot and humid.  A combination of water and sports drinks is a good idea, as the salt in the sports drinks will help stimulate your drive to keep drinking during practice, which is a good thing.

3) A muscle with poor antioxidant status is also an acidic muscle.  Antioxidants like vitamin c, e, pigments called carotenoids and even healthy fats like we find in nuts and seeds will help a hard working muscle cope with all the free radicals and inflammation that comes with lots eccentric reps in the heat.  If you are an athlete who does not value fresh produce at the most sophisticated delivery system for antioxidants then you can expect to experience some muscle stiffness as the rest interval decreases between reps and you might also find that after a week or so you get sick.  These antioxidants are critical in helping your immune system avoid suppression that is typical of athlete training at high volume and intensity, day after day.

4) Most certainly a muscle that is carb fatigued is a poor shock absorber during eccentric loads.  Spring training is not a time to go on a low carb diet!  All those explosive reps in the batters box and out on the field will take there toll on your carb stores which we call glycogen stores.  If you come up short on your carb intake at meals during spring training you will gradually lose a step late in practice and you can bet your coach is going to spot you inability to compete until the final rep is taken daily.  During spring training get about half the food on your plate from healthy starches like pasta, rice, potatoes, whole wheat bread and you even have room for simple sugars from sports drinks and an occasional dessert.  Any attempts to cut carb calories during camp while taking all these reps can leave you injured and in the training room.  This is not the kind of image you want your coaches to have of you vs. out on the field competing.

5) Protein is also going to be key at each meal during camp to aid in the recovery process that occurs daily from all that eccentric loading.  One source of protein does not cover all your protein requirements for muscle soreness.  You need to diversity your protein intake between animal, dairy and vegetable protein sources to speed the rate that damaged muscle is remodeled.  One amino acid that is key in the recovery process is leucine and we find lots of leucine in milk and bean protein so don’t just bank on a chicken breast to meet your protein requirements and realize that we need to feed that beat up muscle about every four hours during spring training!  Fresh produce, carbs and protein are all key to build into each meal or snack every four hours to make sure that muscle can take on the reps without the slowed relaxation that leads to injury during eccentric loads.

6) Lastly plan on cooling those wheels and throwing shoulder down after each practice with ice bags or better yet an ice bath.  We are only talking about 10 minutes of exposure in an ice bath and maybe 25 minutes for ice bags on joints.  If you watch the veterans they are religious about taking the time to ice down after a long days work.  What you are doing is blunting some of the inflammation and swelling that comes from all those eccentric reps and it even helps lower acidity in the fatigued muscle, which is all-good.  If you take the time you will have some spring in the step the next day where others are dragging tail that comes from compromised recovery.  A hot soak for 25 minutes before bed is fine when not injured to facilitate some additional release of growth hormone that typically will pulse during certain phases of our non-REM sleep.  And on morning where you have a break we do 15 minute hot and 5 minute cold contrast baths along with light activity and stretching to flush sore muscles of the metabolites that leave muscles sore and stiff.

7) Lastly you want to bank all the sleep possible during spring training as that growth hormone that pulses every time we hit our non-REM phases of sleep is critical for recovery from eccentric loads on the field.  Anything that leaves you amped up late at night has to go!  Video games before bed, card games, caffeine, foods loaded with caffeine like chocolate are all things to avoid in the hours leading up to lights out.  Shoot for 9-10 hours of rest nightly during spring training so for many this means lights out by 9 PM, like us old folks!  Don’t bank on the night before a big spring scrimmage to make up for days of inadequate rest.  Often the anxiety of the pending competition will compromise rest the night before a big scrimmage.  Thus two bad night of rest in a row will leave you with hang over like symptoms when it comes to reaction time at the plate.  And it goes without saying that alcohol is something that simply needs to be avoided during spring training.  The combination of alcohol and caffeine will set the stage for dehydration and heat illness and possibly even worse outcomes if a supplement like ephedrine is put into the mix.  This is not time to experiment with any new supplement that has not been evaluated by your trainer, strength coach or sports dietitian.