Sports nutrition

Sports nutrition is the study and practice of nutrition as it relates to athletic performance. Although an important part of many sports training regimens, it is most commonly considered in strength sports (for example weight lifting and bodybuilding) and endurance sports (for example cycling, running, and triathlon). Sports nutrition is a science that produces or provides and maintains the food necessary for health and growth dealing with nutrients and nutrition in serious athletes of all sorts who want to make use of nutrition for their benefit. An athlete's nutrition plays a vital part in accomplishing their goals because it allows the athlete to reach their maximum performance. This illustrates how an athlete has to apply the necessary nutrition to benefit the athlete's training and performance in the necessary ways that will affect one in one’s specific sport. There are many different sports that have variation of what is the appropriate diet that is beneficiary to his or her sport. For example, some sports have great stipulation for certain nutrients like proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and supplements in different manners because some sport require you to lose weight, and others require you to gain weight to be able to have you peak at the right time. This also consists of many different concerns such as how much foods and fluids you should consume that are appropriate to your training. What types of foods and fluids you should consume? When to eat and drink through out the day?

Goals of sport nutrition

Some of the main goals of sport nutrition are to: prepare athlete for performance or training. maintain the level of performance or training. Help recovery from performance or training In some sports, nutrition is also necessary in maintaining a body aesthetic (bodybuilding) or body weight (cycling). Sports nutrition has many goals to improve performance. First, it improves performance by improving the body composition, which will increase speed, quickness, mobility, and strength. Second, it will help with speed and recovery, which will in turn create more capacity for practicing and competition. Third, it will allow you to increase energy for both practice and competition, which obviously will help your performance. Then it will also increase immunity, which will help you to stay healthy and be able to keep practicing and competing all the time. Lastly, it will improve your overall health, which is very important for all aspects of life. Proper health is also related to all of the above.

Nutrition for anaerobic exercise

After weight training, there is a need to refill glycogen stores, although they are not likely fully depleted.

To compensate for this glycogen reduction, athletes will often take in a large amount of carbohydrates in the period immediately following exercise. Typically, high glycemic index carbohydrates are preferred for their ability to rapidly raise blood glucose levels.

For the purpose of protein synthesis, protein or individual amino acids are ingested as well.

Nutrition for aerobic exercise

After the aerobic exercise it is necessary to refill the glycogen stores in the skeletal muscles and liver. After exercise, there is a 30 minute window critical to muscle recovery. Before doing anything else, drink something for recovery. Liquids are ideal after exercise and there are several studies that show low-fat milk and chocolate milk as being effective recovery beverages because of its ideal 4:1 combination of carbohydrate and protein that fuels and replenishes our muscles the best.