Learn how to properly drink water while gaining muscle mass and how the amount of water in the body affects your strength performance. Often, bodybuilding enthusiasts are sure that spending a lot of time organizing proper nutrition and drinking regime in sports is the lot of professionals. By thinking this way, they are making a grave mistake and slowing down their progress significantly. If you don't eat right, then you are simply wasting time in the gym. It is impossible to achieve positive results without organizing your diet and drinking regimen in sports, even when using steroids.
Moreover, the lack of progress is not the biggest disadvantage of this approach to sports. If you consume junk food and at the same time actively engage in sports, you can harm the body. At the same time, it is quite difficult to properly organize nutrition and drinking regimen in sports, but if you want to grow, even practicing at an amateur level, then you need to devote a sufficient amount of time to this issue.
You must correctly calculate the energy value of your diet, distribute nutrients, and eat at the right time. Today we will try to tell as fully as possible about the nuances of such a difficult matter as the organization of food and drinking regime in sports. At the same time, the material below can be useful for experienced athletes who want to optimize their diet and achieve even better results.
Diet for athletes
In order for your nutrition and drinking regime in sports to be organized correctly, follow a few rules:
- Consider energy costs taking into account physical activity, your age, gender, climate, etc.
- The athlete's nutrition should be built taking into account the fastest possible recovery of the body after training.
- Through nutrition, you must provide support for your weight or muscle growth, depending on the task at hand.
- It must be remembered that nutrition and drinking regime in sports are inextricably linked and sufficient time should be devoted to these issues.
If you decipher the first rule, then you must remember that the average minimum energy requirement for men is 48 body weight per kilo. For women, this figure will be lower, and will amount to 40 body weight in kilos. At the same time, you need to consider other factors as well, such as the type of sport you play. It is quite obvious that energy expenditure in different sports disciplines can vary significantly.
Scientists have calculated the average daily energy requirement for (active) sports:
- Men - 3,500 to 6,500 calories
- Women - 3,000 to 6,000 calories.
But here you should also take into account the possibility of combining various sports disciplines. For example, an athlete might do bodybuilding in the morning and play football in the evenings. It is quite obvious that in this case the energy consumption will be higher. If the additional physical activity is of a short-term nature, then you need to add from 500 to 800 calories to the indicator of the energy value of your diet. In turn, with prolonged additional physical exertion, it is necessary to increase the calorie intake by 700-1500 calories.
You must, among other things, distribute the nutrients correctly. The body has a different need for carbohydrates, protein compounds and fats, amounting to 60–70 / 10–15 / 20–25 percent, respectively. In addition, you should consume about 80 percent of vegetable fats, and the remaining 20 percent should be vegetable.
And now there are a few recommendations for performing athletes, whose energy expenditure is higher in comparison with amateurs. During training camps, you need to eat at least four times throughout the day. Also remember that after completing the training, it should take from half an hour to 40 minutes before eating. This is necessary for the complete restoration of blood flow. At the same time, we do not recommend conducting classes on an empty stomach, however, you cannot eat shortly before the start of the training either. You need to create your own meal schedule so that the interval between meals does not exceed five hours. If you conduct classes in the morning, then you need to consume about a third of the energy value of the daily diet at breakfast. About 40 percent of all food should be taken at lunchtime.
If you exercise in the evening, the distribution of food throughout the day will be as follows:
- Breakfast - 35 to 40 percent.
- Lunch - 30 to 35 percent.
- Dinner - 25 to 30 percent.
This approach to the organization of nutrition and drinking regime in sports will allow you to provide the body with all the nutrients it needs at the time it needs. Recall that 4 meals a day is the minimum requirement for athletes and scientists recommend eating five times a day. You must remember that sports nutrition will allow you to easily regulate the energy value of the diet, and you will be able to achieve your goals faster.
The importance of drinking regimen for athletes and its organization
Drinking regimen in sports is just as important as nutrition. You probably realized that the concept of "drinking regime" implies a certain order of drinking fluids. Here you also need to take into account various factors, just like when drawing up a diet.
If you properly organize your fluid intake, you can maintain a normal water-salt balance, which is important for the health and normal functioning of all body systems. The body strives to maintain balance in everything, and scientists have proven that the amount of fluid consumed and excreted throughout the day is approximately the same.
The daily fluid requirement for a normal person (not having health problems) is 30 to 40 milliliters per kilogram of body weight. We mentioned the need for fluid for people who are not involved in sports for a reason, since it is also important for them to maintain a water-salt balance.
If you consume large amounts of fluids throughout the day, then the process of osmoregulation may be disrupted. In addition, drinking a lot of fluids per day increases the amount of blood, which can negatively affect the work of the heart muscle. At the same time, a lack of fluid is hazardous to health. With a lack of fluid in the body, a person feels a drop in performance and physical parameters.
The most important period for working on a drinking regime is summer or a hot climate in general. At high ambient temperatures, the body experiences high dehydration and demineralization, which is fraught with the most serious problems. When the ambient temperature exceeds 32 degrees, the sweat glands begin to work actively and body temperature regulation occurs exclusively due to the evaporation of liquid.
If in moderate climatic conditions a person loses about 600 milliliters of liquid with sweat, then in hot weather this figure can reach nine liters. It is quite obvious that in such conditions it is necessary to consume more liquid, since its consumption in the body is high.
If you feel thirsty, then you should immediately drink 0.2 to 0.3 liters of liquid. If you drink large quantities of water, you may experience discomfort in the stomach. Together with sweat, various minerals and fatty acids are excreted from the body. Thus, if the loss of fluid from sweat during the day exceeds five liters, then slightly salted water should be consumed. If your body is exposed to high temperatures for a long time, then you can recommend using green or black tea with a complex of minerals. This will allow not only to restore the reserves of fluid in the body, but also reduce its loss in the process of sweating.
For the correct organization of the drinking regime in sports, you should adhere to the following recommendations:
- For 120 minutes, and then half an hour before the start of the lesson, drink 0.5 liters of water.
- 5 or 10 minutes before the start of physical activity, you should drink another 0.25 liters of water.
- Every 20 minutes of the lesson, you need to consume from 0.1 to 0.25 liters of water.
- Within six hours from the end of the training, it is necessary to drink 1 liter for every kilo of mass lost during the training.
In the next video, Andrey Cherevko will tell about nutrition, drinking regimen and recovery of athletes:
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