Your Body: Hi-Performance Fuel
March 7, 2007
At the most competitive levels, soccer or football is one of the most strenuous sports on the planet. Players have been tracked to run anywhere between 6 to 10 miles and sometimes more depending on the skill level and intensity of a match. It is important to note that because of the natural course of the game with the intervals of sprinting to jogging, this activity places significant demands on your body’s energy resources.
Obviously, you must be physically fit if you expect to exceed. However, what you feed Your Body converts into the fuel you need to succeed. Thus, it is important understand that soccer players require a highly concentrated carbohydrate diet. Why?
Given the significant demands placed on Your Body, you need the appropriate levels of fuel available to maintain your edge. Concentrated carbohydrate diets along with plenty of fluid intake will provide the energy resources you need to break away in the final third or shut down that counter attack in the final 5 minutes of the match.
During the course of a match, your body will seek out and deplete its glycogen supply if your tank is not sufficiently full. While you are tracking back marking or trying to break free on that corner kick, you are generating lactic acid in your blood stream, which will cause cramping and soreness, when your system no longer has fuel generated from good carbohydrate intake to draw from.
Understanding having hi-performance fuel is so important to run and perform, consider that your body is one the most amazing machines and it can convert many different resources into fuel. Take a look at this chart to see how you might build a few Hi-Performance meals.
I’d also like to recommend reading Nutrition For Soccer Players to better understand how to develop a carbohydrate diet regime. Another good resources for pre-game, post-game and fluid replacement can be found here.
Now that you have been armed at least with a few sources of fuel you just have to put this knowledge into action. So, “get stuck in” and look for future segments of Your Body every Wednesday right here or get involved in our Your Body forums on ZigaZoga.com . Lastly, if you’d like to contribute resources to this topic for further discussion, feel free to post a few links here in our comments section.
– Jason
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