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Episode 13: 7 Nutrition Rules Every Footballer Needs To Perform And Recover · Beyond the Pitch Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hello everybody and a huge welcome back to the Beyond the Pitch Podcast. This is episode 13 and today we're going to talk about something that I genuinely think is the most overlooked part of an athlete's performance. You can have the best training program in the world, you can be doing your plyos, your speed work, your strength, everything we've covered so far on this podcast, but if you're not fueling your body properly, you're leaving so much on the table. This episode today is all about nutrition. Not fad deaths, not what some influencer eat in a day, but the practical simple stuff that actually makes a difference, right?
• 0:42
  When you're training hard and playing games and training hard, sorry, I'm playing games every single week, right? I'm going to give you seven simple tips that you can start using this week and then obviously I'll finish with sort of quick recap so you've got the key points to go ahead, right? Because I know that I can ramble on in these episodes, right? But before we start, I want to make this clear that I am a strength and conditioning coach, I am not a registered dietitian. Everything today is general guidance for healthy athletes.
• 1:18
  If you've got a medical condition, allergies or anything specific of going on, speak to a professional, right? So let's get into it. I just had to clear that up. So think about it like this, right? Training is the stimulus.
• 1:29
  It tells your body, you know, I need to get stronger, faster and fitter. But the adaptation, the actual getting better happens when you recover. And recovery is built on two things, sleep, which we covered in an episode previously, and food. Right? If you're not eating enough or you're eating the wrong things at the wrong times, three things happen.
• 1:51
  One, your performance will drop. You feel flat in the second half. Your legs will go. Your sprint drops off. Number two then, your recovery slows down, you turn up there next session still tired.
• 2:03
  And three, your injury risk then will go up. Right? We spoke about injury prevention in episode three, actually, in this podcast. Nutrition is a massive part of that picture that people often forget about. Now, the good news is that you don't need to be perfect.
• 2:19
  You just need to get the basics right consistently. And that's what these tips throughout this evening's podcast will be all about. Tip number one, probably the big one, is to eat enough. Right? I see this all the time, especially with younger, shorter players.
• 2:32
  Like, they're training four or five, maybe six times a week, playing a match at the weekend and they're eating like someone who sits at a desk all day. Breakfast is skipped, lunch is a meal deal and then they wonder why they're tired all the time. And this used to be me when I played a Climb ball and the likes of Linfield, like I didn't know anything about nutrition at all. The only real time I started to focus on my nutrition side was when I had just left I was just about to sign from all I was saying was the time when I actually started to look into my nutrition and eat a lot better and eat a lot cleaner and fuel my body correctly. Now, if I was to do this when I was younger and playing at a higher level than what I did when I just finished there, would I have maybe, I'm not saying I made it, but it probably would have given me a lot more to go off and my performances would have been better therefore then I potentially could have got a better contract.
• 3:31
  But I'm not just saying that it was down to my nutrition, there's the why I didn't succeed, It's obviously ability as well, right? Now, when you train you burn a lot of energy, right? So if you don't put that energy back in, your body obviously has to make choices. It starts basically saying, okay, I don't have enough fuel for everything, so I'm going to cut back somewhere. That might be a recovery, it might be muscle building, it might be just your immune system, which is why you see a lot of players picking up every cold going, right?
• 3:59
  And in sports science there's a term for this low energy availability and it's linked to worse performance, more injuries, and in the long run problems with bones and your shorter hormones, right? So, the first question I would want to ask you is, are you actually eating enough to match what you're doing? Some simple signs that you might not be is that you're constantly tired, you're getting ill a lot, your performance has plateaued, or you're going backwards, right? Or you're picking up niggles that just won't go away. So, what you want to do here is aim for three proper meals a day and then have your training days, add a couple of snacks in between, don't skip breakfast before a morning session.
• 4:35
  And if you're trying to put on a little bit of size, you need to eat more than feel comfortable at first. It's a skill and it gets easier, right? So, tip number two, get enough protein and spread it out. Protein is what your body uses to repair and obviously build muscle, right? So every time you train, you're creating tiny bits of damage in the muscle and protein is the material to rebuild it stronger.
• 4:58
  Now, there's a lot of different research out there regarding protein, how much you should take per day and blah, blah, blah, right? And to make life simple, whatever you weigh in kilogram times it by two. So if you weigh seventy kilogram, you want to eat 140 grams of protein per day, okay? Now that sounds like a lot, but don't try and get it all in one go. A lot of people eat hardly any protein at breakfast, a little bit of lunch, then a massive steak at dinner.
• 5:23
  Your body does better when it gets a decent head of protein spread across the day. So what you want to aim for, for example, if you're hitting 140 grams of protein per day, you want to look at sitting at, let's say, 45 grams per meal. Is my maths right? Yeah, not far off with her. So across three meals, which will then leave you an extra wee bit if you want for a snack in the evening time to go above 140 grams of protein.
• 5:47
  And I get this question a lot, like, is too much protein gonna be bad for me to own? And the answer is no. The more protein you get, the better. So for example, breakfast, right, you got three or four eggs and toast or Greek yogurt with oats and fruit. Lunch, you could have a chicken wrap, tuna pasta or a decent portion of meat and fish with rice, right?
• 6:08
  Your snack thing could be a protein shake or your dinner could be your main protein. So chicken, beef, salmon, mince, whatever you like with carbs and veg. Now, a bit of protein before bed, something like a Greek yogurt or a glass of milk. There's decent sort of evidence in this that it helps overnight recovery and it fits nicely with the sleep stuff that we covered on previous episodes. Tip number three, carbs are not your enemy.
• 6:30
  Carbs are your fuel, especially for performance, right? There is so much noise about cutting carbs online. For fat loss, I personally agree with it because I've seen a lot of benefits from it myself personally and with clients. But for performance, is it good? Nah, not necessarily.
• 6:49
  Now, if you're not training much, it's totally fine, like it's a different conversation for another day. But if you're an athlete, especially in a sport like football, where you're doing repeated sprints, changes of direction, high intensity efforts for ninety minutes, carbohydrates are your main fuel source. Your body will store your carbs in your muscles, as something basically called glycogen, not to get too fancy. Think of it like fuel in your tank, right? When that tank runs low, your intensity drops.
• 7:14
  And that's often why, you know, you'll see players feed in the last twenty minutes or you'll see a player grabbing a jail say for the last twenty minutes, right? The smart way to think about cards is to match them with your training load. So on a big heavy day of training, a big session or a match, eight more cards. It is plain and simple. Your plate should change depending on what your day looks like, right?
• 7:34
  The likes of your rice, the likes of your pasta, likes of potatoes, oats. Heavy day or match day, around half your plate is carbs, moderate training, a third of your plate and light or sort of rest day, about a quarter of your plate is carbs. The rest is protein and plenty of veg, right? Tip number four, what should I eat on game day? If you want to know what you should eat on game day, DM me the word game day.
• 7:54
  I have a complete free guide on this, I'm only going to go into this. The night before is where you start topping up your tank, right? You've got your pre match meal, you've got the top up which is about an hour before kickoff, then you've half time with sweets, etcetera, but DM me the word, what do you call it? I've just forgot the word, this one off the top of my head. I did say it though, DM me the word game day and I'll send you across my free guide.
• 8:16
  Tip number five then, hydration. So even being slightly dehydrated can affect your performance, right? Your decision making, your concentration, your endurance, they all take a hit. So the simplest check that you can do is look at the color of your urine, right? Pale yellow like straw, you're in a good place.
• 8:33
  Dark yellow, you need to drink more. Not glamorous, but dead works, right? Start your day off with a big glass of water, carry a water bottle with you, drink steadily in the hours before training or a game, not a leader in one go five minutes before, right? If you're a heavy sweater or you're training in the heat, get out an electrolyte in as well and salt is a big one that gets lost in sweat. After a game, a good habit is to keep drinking over the next few hours and I don't mean paints, right?
• 8:57
  Along with your recovery meal to replace what you've lost because when we drink alcohol it actually dehydrates us, so that defeats the purpose. Tip number six then, so recovery nutrition. So after a game or hard session, your body is ready to start repairing. So give it what it needs. Give it the protein to repair, give it the carbs to refill the tank and your fluids and to rehydrate.
• 9:16
  Try to get a proper meal or a decent snack in within a couple of hours of finishing. My go to meal after a football game, no matter if it was a Tuesday, no matter if was Saturday or Friday or whatever, was a large pizza from Domino's. It has a decent amount of protein in it, not the best, right? But I had plenty of carbs. It refueled my tank.
• 9:33
  And that is what you simply need to do is to refuel your tank so that you can go again. It's a long season. It's a long, hard graft of training and matches and constantly, if you're constantly feeling burnt out, you ain't gonna get anywhere, right? Chocolate milk was probably my go to as well, probably the best and the cheapest recovery options out there. Proteins, carbs, fluids, all in one.
• 9:54
  So a chocolate protein shake, or sorry, chocolate protein milk and a large Domino's pizza, right? And this ties back to when we spoke about in one of the earlier episodes regarding if you played a late game and you're struggling to sleep, right? A heavy greasy takeaway at eleven at night isn't going to help. So something lighter potentially with carbs or protein will set you up for better sleep and recovery, right? And if you've had a bad result, like we spoke about as well in episode eight, don't skip the recovery meal because you're annoyed, your body still needs it.
• 10:24
  When lose or draw, you need to fucking eat, right? Tip number seven then, so supplements. Food, I always, always will harp on about this. Food always comes first. The supplement industry is huge and it's very good at marketing, but supplements are exactly that.
• 10:40
  A supplement to a good diet, not a replacement for one. So if your basics aren't in place, no powder is going to affect it. Now, that said, there are a few with good sort of evidence behind them, So your protein powder, it's not magic, it's just convenient. If you don't get your protein from food, get it from a fucking powder. Creatine, another thing that I would recommend, it helps with high intensity efforts and strength, it's three to five grams per day, it's very, very good for hydration.
• 11:07
  Caffeine, be careful with timing of caffeine so it doesn't wreck your sleep, especially for sort of evening kickoffs, and then vitamin D, probably the best one, right? Especially with being in Northern Ireland, and I don't know where you're maybe listening to this from, if you're from The UK, right, we don't get much winter sunshine. So, which is, this is worth probably a conversation with your GP regarding that. But vitamin D is something that I would always, always have took. I still do, now in two weeks time when I moved to Australia and I've been taking that, yeah, look into your vitamin D, right?
• 11:45
  So, if you're playing at a level where you can be sort of drug tested as well, only use products that are third party tested, right? If you're 18, focus on food, speak to a parent and a coach or a qualified professional before using things like creatine or caffeine products, right? So, one, eating off to match what you're doing. Two, get enough protein and spread it out across the day. Three, carbs or your fuel, so match them to your training load.
• 12:10
  Four, have a game day routine, carbs the night before, me and me three to four hours before. Stay hydrated is number five. Number six, refuel after games with protein, carbs and fluids. And number seven, food first, supplements second. The magic isn't in doing this perfectly for one week, it's doing it well most of the time for months and years.
• 12:30
  That's where the results come from. And if you want help putting this into practice, building a nutrition approach around your training and on your games, drop me a DM on Instagram, DM me the word game dev for that free guide, and then also just let me know how your season's been going, how things have been, And if you're not in the email yet... List yet, get on it. Right? There's a link in my bio.
• 12:49
  And I give away a lot of free information, and I really, really appreciate every single one of you tuning in to today's episode. If you've got something from this, share it with a teammate who needs to hear it. And borrow that. I I will see you all next week.