When I was in the middle of my Masters’ program, working with the Olympic Swimmers at the Australian Institute of Sport, I was fortunate to live “on campus” with the athletes. Going through the same daily routines that some of the best athletes in the country, from all sports, went through. This extended far beyond the time in the pool. A major part of the daily routine took place in the A.I.S. Dining Hall – the very serious business of fueling the daily work!
From my first visit to the dining hall, it was readily apparent just how seriously nutrition was taken for athletes at this level. Every “station” within the food hall had detailed nutritional information posted & servings were measured – in most cases, simply by the size of the ‘scooper’ or tray being used to dispense the food. There was a whole department devoted to nutrition and every athlete at the A.I.S. had their own personal plan of what they should be eating to fuel the demands of the daily training. In short, proper nutrition received a very high priority in the daily lives of these high-performance athletes.
Many of you reading the above may be thinking such a strategy is overkill. Some of you may even think that such a strategy of quantifying what we eat leads to dysfunctional relationships with food and eating disorders, and yet, many will think it is perfectly healthy & normal to obsess over the numbers in your training log. I think that much of this perception comes from the idea that when we watch what we eat, we quantify so that we can restrict. However, in this environment of high-performance athletes, I can assure you that, more often than not, the focus was in the other direction – making sure that the athlete got enough in! Making sure the athlete was fueling the required work!
In the previous chapter, we looked at the importance of glycogen as an “energy currency”. For high-performance athletes, a key focus is on managing and monitoring energy and glycogen stores. This ensures that intense training happens when the energy reserves are primed to support it.
As we explored earlier, these energy reserves aren't set in stone. They can be significantly influenced by the base fitness of the athlete, by non-training stressors, and, strongly, by their daily nutrition—our spotlight for this chapter.
On a macronutrient level, high-performance nutrition walks a tightrope. Athletes aim to consume enough carbohydrates to keep their glycogen stores ample for intense (glycolytic) training. Simultaneously, they want to cultivate the metabolic flexibility that will allow them to *not* use these glycogen stores for their easy training & daily living. In simpler terms, they desire potent glycolytic power for high-intensity exercise and robust lipolytic (fat-burning) power for low-intensity exercise and everyday activities.
Figure 15.1: Effective nutrition is about having the metabolic flexibility to switch between sugar burning and fat burning as the situation requires
Achieving this balance involves keeping a vigilant eye on a number of factors:
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