How do you approach your off-season nutrition? It\u2019s easy to see the importance of nutrition during the training and racing months, but in the off-season with more time to play with and less structure to the day it can be confusing to know when to eat, and what to eat when there isn\u2019t such a high energy demand.<\/p>\n
With the lower training load comes a reduced energy expenditure, but this doesn\u2019t necessarily mean any major reductions need to be made to your energy intake. While more specific sport nutrition practices can be relaxed during the off-season, your body still needs energy to support muscle mass and any activity or training goals, as well as prolonged recovery from summer racing. <\/p>\n
Depending on your off-season goals, whether its to relax and recuperate; keep fitness ticking over, or a more structured plan to build muscle mass or fitness, the following points will help you to approach off-season with more clarity.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t change your main meals. <\/p>\n
The fundamental approach to off-season nutrition should be to simply eat regularly throughout the day. Without training to structure the day, eating times can go out the window; keep your usual main meal eating times and the same foods to maintain some regularity. <\/p>\n
Some rowers may find that hunger drops during off-season and appetite is low, making it harder to eat; others will find hunger is through the roof. Keeping these habitual meal sizes and times will help to manage hunger fluctuations that come with a change in training load, and further drives recovery in the first weeks of lower training load. <\/p>\n
2. Prioritise nutrient density in snacks and meals<\/p>\n
During the season when the heavy training load hits and time and energy is low, convenient eating practices mean that food choices are rushed or not as balanced as they could be. <\/p>\n
With a bit more time to play with in the off-season, prioritise well-balanced snacks and meals including a source of complex carbohydrate, protein and unsaturated fats, with some fruit and veggies. <\/p>\n
3. Replace simple carbohydrates with complex carbohydrates<\/p>\n
Training and recovery requires simple carbohydrates around sessions to help fuel and replace muscle glycogen stores. These simple carbs are great for quick energy, but don\u2019t contain many other nutrients. Since we are no longer fuelling intense training, replace these simple carb sources (white rice, white bread, refined sugars and cereals) with more complex carbohydrates like oats, brown wholegrain bread, brown rice, pasta, and grains, to add more fibre and vitamins to your diet. <\/p>\n
This applies to snacks and main meals where easy swaps can be made. Opting for these complex carbohydrates will support satiety, as well as immune and gut health during the off season. <\/p>\n
3. Eat a source of protein every 3-4 hours<\/p>\n
Even with the lower training load, we want to continue supporting the muscle mass we\u2019ve built over the season. Eating protein every 3-4 hours within a main meal or snack will keep muscle protein synthesis active, ensuring our body is in a \u2018building\u2019 state, rather than a \u2018breakdown\u2019 state. <\/p>\n
If your off-season goals require a bit more structure like building muscle mass, make sure to eat a high protein and carbohydrate snack or meal within the hour after a training session. <\/p>\n
4. Use the time to build good nutrition habits <\/p>\n
To hit the ground running in September, I always recommend to use this time to work on nutrition practices around training. Here\u2019s a few ways you can do this: <\/p>\n
Experiment with new carbohydrate sources that work for your pre-training snack or meal <\/p>\n
Try different amounts of carbohydrate before and during exercise to see if you can boost intake<\/p>\n
If you find it hard to eat before an early training session, regularly eat a small snack upon waking to train your stomach<\/p>\n
Go to the supermarket and find easy to eat, high carbohydrate foods for your pre and post training fuel<\/p>\n
Try some intra-session fuel like gels and sweets to see what works for you (for 60+ min sessions)<\/p>\n
Practice your post session fuelling strategy- how quickly can you get carbs and protein on board after exercise?<\/p>\n
If you find it hard to eat straight after training, find some food sources that are easy to eat, small portion but big carb hit like chocolate milk, bars, or food you can prepare and store in your bag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How do you approach your off-season nutrition? It\u2019s easy to see the importance of nutrition during the training…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[103,61,60],"class_list":["post-566258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}