Nutrition Tips for Competitive Athletes

There’s a big difference between the nutrition plans the avid weight lifter should be following and those that should be employed by competitive athletes.

When I say competitive athletes, I’m not talking about those that play beer league softball games once or twice per week. I’m talking about men and women who spend several days each week going through the rigors of intense practices and competitive action.

Even though athletes are primarily concerned with their ability to perform, there is a direct correlation between performance and physical composition.

This isn’t breaking news. For decades athletes have worked on building muscle, shedding fat, adding strength, or any combination of these, in order to enhance their ability to perform in their respective sport.

Because competitive athletes are incredibly active, their nutritional needs far exceed those of the recreational athlete or weight lifter.

For instance, 8-time gold medal Olympian, Michael Phelps, has been reported to have consumed in excess of eight thousand calories per day when training for the Beijing Olympics.

Even while eating three or four times the calories required for maintenance by the average person, Phelps maintained a lean physique, because he was expending that extreme number of calories on a daily basis.

Phelps eating eight thousand calories a day wasn’t by accident. This was a carefully calculated nutritional allowance specifically formulated for him to have the energy required to fuel his practices and competitions, while maintaining the ideal swimmer’s physique.

While most other competitive athletes won’t need to consume calories in the realm of those taken in by Michael Phelps on a daily basis, the principle remains the same: they need to feed their bodies in accordance with their special requirements as a competitive athlete in their specific sport.

Let’s look at this concept in a little greater detail…

Assessing the Caloric Needs of a Competitive Athlete

Before assessing your caloric needs, you need to first decide what changes you would like to make to your body in order to improve your competitive abilities.

For instance, additional size and strength will benefit most high school football players.

On the other hand, a high school baseball player that weighs 250lbs and plays third base may need to cut fat in order to enhance his speed, agility and his ability to move laterally.

My point is that you need to determine your desired results and then intentionally feed your body to induce the results you’re after.

Once you’ve made this determination the next step is to get an idea of the nutrition required to maintain your current composition, so you can then adjust according to your goals.

Determining your daily allowance of calories for maintenance can be done using a simple Basal Metabolic Rate formula as follows:

1. BMR for Male Athletes = 1.5 x (66 + (6.23 x weight in pounds) + (12.7 x height in inches) – (6.8 x age in year))
2. BMR for Female Athletes = 1.5 x (655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) – (4.7 x age in years))

The BMR you calculate using either of the formulas above (based on your gender) will provide you with a ballpark number in terms of your daily caloric starting point.

Adjusting Calories for Your Athletic Goals

Once you have your baseline calculation of your maintenance calories, using the formulas above, you’ll want to then adjust that number according to your goals.

If the goal is to build additional size and strength, you should add 250 calories to the calculation for your daily caloric allowance.

Conversely, if you would like to lean out, you should subtract 250 calories from your calculated BMR.

It’s important to note that the BMR formulas above are not exact, so you’ll need to monitor your progress and continue to make adjustments as necessary.

For instance, if your goal is to reduce body fat, take a body weight and stomach circumference measurement every week. If either of these measurements hasn’t decreased after seven days you’ll need to further reduce your calories by 250 per day.

On that note, competitive athletes should never modify their calories in large increments, as doing so will adversely affect their physical performance.

Reducing calories by extreme amounts will zap your energy levels, cause muscle atrophy and reduce bodily strength.

On the other hand, sizable increases in calories will cause you to gain magnitudes of body fat that will negatively impact your speed, agility and functional ranges of motion.

Never make the mistake of thinking you have to be fat to be strong!

Fat doesn’t push or pull anything – only muscle does. All excess body fat will do is slow you down and decrease your performance.

Admittedly, there are a few sports where additional weight gain can be beneficial for the purpose of leverage; sumo wrestlers and football linemen come to mind.

But for most competitive athletes, high amounts of body fat will do nothing to improve their performance and will usually make it less likely for them to dominate in their respective sport.

Never Underestimate the Importance of Nutrition

Nutrition is an essential aspect for anyone wanting to improve their physique, but the importance of nutrition is magnified even further for those whose athletic performance is at stake.

The nutritional tips I’ve provided in this article will give you the ability to continually improve your physical abilities by enabling you to induce the changes to your physique you need to excel as a competitive athlete in your specific sport.