Sleep & Athletic Performance – The Impact and How to Improve

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Are you skimping on sleep, waking up tired and plodding through your workouts with the well-intended goal of hitting the hay earlier tonight?  If so, welcome to the club! A recent blog I wrote, The Secret Recipe to Athletic Performance Enhancement, discusses why blindly following a training plan without first mastering physiological, dietary and lifestyle essentials is ill-advised.

While there are many recovery modalities available to athletes, sleep is the most important and impactful. And, unsurprisingly, it’s the one essential that is most commonly underestimated and compromised by busy people on-the-go. I get it, there’s nothing sexy about sleep; It doesn’t come in a shiny package marketed with endless promises of increased strength and energy, but it should. So, grab your pillow and get comfy while I explain why sleep should be at the forefront of your training plan. 

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Hydration​ and Athletic Performance

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Recently, I gave a sports nutrition talk to a local triathlon club. As an ice breaker, I started by asking a few basic questions to gauge their knowledge about proper hydration while training. Their answers and misconceptions mirrored those that I have heard from hundreds of athletes over the past three decades. Athletes, specifically runners, when asked about their hydration practices, most frequently respond by saying such things as, “I don’t need to hydrate while running, and will drink after my workout.”

Other athletes have no hydration plan at all, saying such things as “If I become thirsty, I will stop and sip from a water fountain along the route.” While others will make excuses about why they don’t drink while training, including not willing to carry fluids and sport drinks hurt their stomachs or make them nauseous.

Trust me, I have heard every excuse why athletes do not hydrate during their workouts. 

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Stress and Athletic Performance

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Unless you are a professional athlete whose daily schedule is simplified around a train, sleep, eat, and repeat cycle, then you along with most athletes walk a fine line between balancing life stress with training stress. Amateur athletes should view their training loads as one part of a healthy, productive, and engaged life. It’s critical to take inventory of your life both in and outside sport to recognize your overall stress environment as it relates to fitness and performance. 

The word stress oozes negativity. It’s definition: “A state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances.” Athletes incur two types of stress: non-training and training stress. Both affect our body, energy, hormones, performance, mood, etc. Let’s break down the origin of our stress and learn how to mitigate its negative effect on our lives. 

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The Secret Recipe to Performance Enhancement​

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The other day I overheard a conversation between two runners discussing training plans and weekly mileage as it related to their performance in an upcoming race. I’m not one to eavesdrop, but the conversation was eerily similar to a discussion I had recently with one of my coached athletes. Both conversations circled around “cutting-edge run workouts alongside becoming leaner to reach optimal race weight.”  

Goodness… where do I start debunking? I’ll begin with the foundation–where I started with my athlete. This is a jam-packed topic that seems complicated but is actually quite simple. I’m cutting to the chase, so listen up.

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The best macronutrient ratio for athletes and the truth behind calories burned

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Athletes come in all shapes and sizes. Just like books, they shouldn’t be judged by their cover. Still, whether it’s to shed a few unwanted pounds or improve performance, striving for leaner body composition is an ongoing process for many athletes. But, how to achieve this ideal physique is like a fork in the road, and the weight loss GPS may guide you on an off-road journey leading to a dead end. Follow the tried and true path, and heed advice from this guide to burning calories and a balanced macronutrient ratio before you get started.

Counting Calories

With the numerous health and fitness apps at our fingertips, such as MyFitnessPal, MyPlate, and Lose It!, counting calories consumed minus calories burned has become an easy and convenient way to fit weight loss into a busy day using a simple math equation. Most assume that if the consumption of 3,500 calories equals one pound of body weight, reducing your intake by 3,500 calories via a combination of eating less and exercising more will result in one pound of weight loss, right?  No, it’s not quite that simple.

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Is Sugar Bad for You? The Role of Carbs in Your Diet

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In the athletic world, regardless of talent or end goal, athletes and non-athletes alike can easily be swept up by the latest performance and body-composition enhancing diets with the hope of transforming into faster, leaner running machines. Fad diet trends are nothing new and have come full circle, from Atkins to Paleo, to Whole 30 to Keto (short for Ketogenic). All of these diets either eliminate a whole food group or have a starring villain, namely sugar.

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The Keto Diet and Endurance Athletes

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Whether you are gunning for a PR, podium placement or toeing the line at your first IRONMAN or marathon, the one thing that links all athletes is the desire to be in the best shape while feeling good in our own skin. Because of our heavy training load, it’s crucial to follow a nutrition plan that matches activity level while supports health and performance. But this is where things get tricky and body composition can easily be confused for fitness.

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The Female Athlete’s Guide to Fueling & Hydration for Optimal Performance – Part III: Recovery Fueling

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Part III of The Female Athlete’s Guide to Fueling & Hydration. In this blog, we discuss the role of recovery, how to optimize and accelerate recovery, and the best options and strategies for female athletes.

Part II covers fueling/hydrating during training and racing.

The post workout/event recovery fuel is designed to speed up the repair of damaged muscle tissue, replace glycogen/energy stores, and promote physical adaptation. Immediately following a training session, muscle cells are open, insulin sensitivity elevated, and the body is primed to absorb simple sugar and protein, so the quicker you refuel, the better.

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