Dallas Ice Jets

Talent and work ethic are not the only two ingredients a hockey player needs to be successful. Aside from training, nutrition is the most important influence on sports performance. Athletes need to fuel their bodies with the proper foods in order to get the most out of their efforts.

A great amount of energy is needed by the body to exert such efforts as those that are required to play hockey. Proper nutrition plays a strong role in achieving high energy levels that are necessary for optimal training sessions and game performance. The mass of muscle, bones, ligaments, tendons and cells that make up your body can only move consistently well if they have been nourished properly. The old adage “You are what you eat” is most certainly true in the sports arena.

If players fill up on junk food and/or poor quality food choices, they will get minimum output from their body. In order for players to get maximum output, it is vital that they know what should be consumed, when it should be consumed, and the effects of this consumption. Intelligent food choices can energize a player’s game and help him reach top performance.

Hockey is becoming more and more competitive and nutrition plays a big part on how well you perform. To reach your highest potential, all of your body systems must be perfectly tuned. Nothing is more important to your well-being and ability to perform than good nutrition. Eating the right foods helps you maintain desirable body weight, stay physically fit, and establish optimum nerve-muscle reflexes. Without the right foods, even physical conditioning and expert coaching are not enough to push you to your best.

Good nutrition must be a key part of your training program if you are to succeed. Remember, what you eat day in and day out provides you with the nutrients and energy to sustain you over the long haul. There is no one “miracle food” or supplement that can supply all of your nutritional needs. Certain foods supply mainly proteins, other foods contain vitamins and minerals, and so on. The key to balancing your diet is to combine different foods so that nutrient deficiencies in some foods are made up by nutrient surpluses in others. Eating a variety of foods is the secret.

The nutrients - the proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals, and water - are teammates that work together to provide good nutrition. Just as each a team member carries out different tasks during a game, each nutrient performs specific functions in your body. A lack of just one nutrient is a disadvantage to your body, just as losing a player to the penalty box is a disadvantage for a hockey team. Your body needs all these nutrients all of the time, so the foods you eat should supply them every day. Just because you are not hungry does not necessarily mean that your body has all the nutrients it needs. You can fill up on foods that contain mostly carbohydrates and fats, but your body still has basic needs for proteins, minerals, and vitamins.

Proper diets for meeting increased energy needs
Participating in hockey can drastically increase your food energy needs. Increased physical activity calls for more food calories. Also, when you train, you increase muscle tissue relative to fat tissue, and muscle tissue requires more calories than fat tissue. Going out for sports can easily increase the daily caloric needs of a teen athlete by 2,000 or more. A teenage boy training for hockey may consume 5,000 or more calories daily.

To meet increased energy needs, most teenage athletes require more than the minimum number of servings listed. For most players, the increased energy should come from the vegetable group and the bread, cereal, rice, and pasta group. Foods in these two groups contain mostly starch, which is an excellent source of food energy. Nutrient-dense foods in the Grains, Fruit and Vegetable, Dairy and Meat groups provide the essential parts of a healthy diet.

The amount of food an athlete in training needs depends on his age, weight, and activity level. A larger athlete requires more calories that a smaller one because more energy is needed to move more mass over the same distance. Typically, more calories are burned in a practice session than in an actual competition due to more overall physical activity. The rate at which calories are burned for short periods of time is greater from short bursts of intense activity during competition. Activity levels vary among sports as well as with the position played in a sport.

One of the least-recognized nutrition problems of the young athlete is simply not eating enough. Extracurricular activities make life so busy that one may simply not take the time to eat. After-school practice sessions may be so exhausting that you even feel too tired to eat. But everyone, specifically athletes, must take the time to eat the right foods. Don't let “third-period” fatigue caused by poor eating hurt your performance. If an athlete who is in shape loses unwanted body weight during hockey season, it's a good indication that he isn't eating enough energy-providing foods. Young players should be weighed once a week throughout the season to guard against unhealthy weight loss caused by inadequate food intake.

The importance of adequate hydration
Water is a basic necessity for all life and proper hydration is another key component to a successful nutrition plan. For young athletes, not enough water means you can't play your best. It may even cause serious health problems. Our blood circulates like an ocean within us. The water in blood helps carry nutrients and energy to our body cells. It also carries waste products away from our cells for excretion from our body. Water helps regulate our body temperature, an important factor for all of us. As a young athlete, you have a special need for water. When you participate in a sport like hockey, you burn a lot of food energy. Some of that unleashed energy powers muscles and some of that energy is released as heat. Water keeps you from overheating. Sweating and evaporation from the skin cools you down. However, water is lost in the cooling process. That can be dangerous if the water is not replenished. If you run low on water, your body can overheat, like a car that is low on cooling fluid. Losing just two percent of the body's water can hurt performance.

Since young athletes have a lot of growing to do, new muscle tissue must be made. Bones need to grow rapidly. And with all of the physical activity, some tissues need to be repaired. All of this metabolic activity requires an abundance of nutrients and energy carried to body tissues and waste products carried away. Water allows all of this to happen. Water is vital for your body's growth, repair, and physical activity.

Thirst is your body's signal that you need to drink water. By the time you feel thirsty, you may have already lost one percent to two percent of your water - and that's enough to hurt performance. Just drinking enough liquids to satisfy your thirst may not supply your body's needs. If you drink only enough water to quench your thirst, your body may take up to 24 hours to fully re-hydrate its cells and regain maximum performance.

Most of the weight you lose during an event or training session is water lost through sweat. Of course, you lose some weight when your body burns materials for energy. For example, the glycogen stored in liver and muscle cells is used for energy, which results in some weight loss. Some fat and protein is burned for energy, too, and that results in additional weight loss. However, most of the weight you lose during strenuous physical activity is water lost through perspiration. Some drinks that have caffeine, such as colas and iced tea, are advertised as thirst quenchers. Do not use caffeine-containing beverages as fluid re-hydration drinks shortly before, during, or after a practice or competition. Caffeine acts as a diuretic. It increases urine output and can promote dehydration.

Pregame meal choices for a competitive edge
What you eat every day can have a big effect on how you perform, and more specifically, what you eat right before an event can be critical. Wrong choices can be disastrous. Right choices can give you that competitive edge. An athlete’s pregame meal needs to consist of wise food choices. While the pregame meal can supply your body with significant amounts of energy, don't expect it to supply all the energy you'll need for the event. You should eat the right kinds of food for several days before the event to charge up your muscles with glycogen. Glycogen is a key energy source your muscles use during most sports activities.

Although the pregame meal won't cause large increases in muscle glycogen, it will:

• Help avoid hunger during the event,
• stabilize blood-sugar levels and
• add some food energy to complement existing energy stores of muscle glycogen and hydrate the body (supply water to the body's cells).

The body has a very detailed way of operating and when it comes to understanding how it works for the purpose of athletic, as well as normal activity. The body is able to recognize which foods can be used for energy more efficiently. Some foods cannot be used at all, and are then turned into waste. Your fast foods are processed and contain many unnatural or modified nutrients. This can actually slow the body down, make it feel sluggish, and eventually lead to an energy “crash”. You have different “qualities” of foods you can put in your body. If you put higher quality foods such as lean meats, fruits, vegetables, grains, water, and other non-processed foods, your body should run more efficiently. These "high quality" foods will help with the repair and recovery of the muscles that are used while playing. They will also help you maintain energy, and directly affect your blood sugar levels. These levels are associated with the amount and duration of the energy that your body will have stored or have readily available for your sport.

By eating foods, like the ones mentioned above (lean meats, fruits, vegetables, grains, et cetera.) your body will work more efficiently and energy levels will reflect in the same way. Eating breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and it is crucial to the energy kick start the body needs to begin the day.

Avoiding “lower quality” foods
Let's look at the "lower quality" foods and how they affect our bodies. By eating low quality, highly processed (or man-made) foods, the body never quite maintains itself within the "optimal range." Examples of these low quality foods are: fast foods, soda, candy, artificial fruit juices, most convenient microwavable foods, and potato chips.

The lower quality foods tend to leave the body in a false sense of satisfaction. Highly processed foods directly affect the blood sugar as well and can create a "sugar high." This quick burst of energy is usually followed by an energy crash, and the body can feel sluggish, focus on the game can be affected, and overall play can diminish because of the body's inability to catch up to the demands the game of hockey places on it. As an athlete, you should want to put the highest quality foods in your body for your sport and for your own personal health.

Five keys to diet and performance
Players need to feed their body the essential nutrients required to fuel an athlete. Food is the necessary ingredient for an optimal performance. At Ice Jets Hockey, we believe in the value of sports nutrition and work with our players and teams to teach them the five key strategies in how to link the 'winning connection' between diet and performance.

1. Fuelling
2. Hydration
3. Refueling
4. Recovery
5. Repair.