PERFORMANCE NUTRITION
What is Performance Nutrition?
Do you want to improve your performance as an athlete?
At Optimal Health & Performance we can help you to be your best through optimising fuelling, hydration and supplementation practices to enhance your ability to train, recovery and compete.
Performance nutrition is the use of dietary interventions to impact and improve athletic performance and training ability. The strategies used are different for each athlete and are developed by discussing your goals including;
- your lifestyle, family/job commitments.
- Your sport and event/s.
- Your current diet & willingness to change.
- Nutrition & performance, past & present both before, during & after your events.
A large part of the nutritionist’s role is to translate evidence based scientific guidelines relating to nutrition and sports performance into practical everyday advice that is specifically tailored to the individual athlete.
A performance nutritionist can also work closely with your coach to cycle your nutrition during different periods of training to suit your required energy intake during that time.
Optimal Health & Performance provide a range of nutrition services to enhance performance during both training and competition phases. Common interventions include:
- Dietary assessment: Assessing the athlete’s nutritional intake against their training and competition requirements and modify their diet to meet these demands.
- Assessment and monitoring: On-going assessment of body composition and overall health to identify areas needing improvement and assessment of impact.
- Other areas we will work on are hydration, recovery, supplements and developing your diet to include a wider variety of nutritious foods along with preparing for travel (if required),e.g. food hygiene, food choices and food safety.
How Does Performance Nutrition Help Athletes?
The Performance Nutritionist identifies areas in an athlete’s diet that if improved will enhance their ability to train, recovery and compete. Some common examples include:
- Improving the quantities and types of foods eaten before a training session improves an athlete’s ability to cope with a specific training load. Different strategies will be used depending on the training phase of the athlete.
- Eating the correct balance of nutrients directly after a training session makes sure the athletes body gets the most gains from the session (i.e. strength or endurance gains). It also drives recovery to allow them to train again within a short period of time.
- Improving levels of hydration by changing timing and type of fluids drunk during training and competition will reduce both mental and physical fatigue.