Sports Nutritionist Melbourne

Sports Nutrition With Glowing Health Nutrition

Whether you’re an endurance athlete, games-sports person or weightlifter you’ll always get factual, effective, and science-backed advice about your sport at Glowing Health Nutrition.

Our approach here is to listen to you first, to understand your situation and your goals before providing any guidance.

Then together we can agree on your targets and develop an individualised plan tailored to your sport and body composition.

Our role is to support you to meet your sporting goals, so whichever way it takes you, we’re with you on your nutrition journey for as long as you need us.

Nutrition for Athletes

When your favourite sport becomes more than just a way to exercise and is a passion that drives you to be more than just good at it, you continually look for ways to improve your performance.

Combing through all the parts of your training and preparation that could make a difference includes making sure the quality of your nutrition matches the intensity of your hard work. It could be the step that helps take your performance to the next level.

So how can what you eat affect your sporting results?

When it’s time to get serious about your sport, it’s time to get scientific about it – that is, in analysing your physiological needs in relation to your output.

The first step is to calculate your baseline, or where you are now, then identify where you want to be and build a plan to bridge the gap.

Obviously there needs to be sufficient nutrition to fuel your performance, but without any excess that may detract from it. And while there is science to guide us, the final nutritional balance is unique to you and the requirements of your sport.

Nutrition For Competition

Whether it’s game day, the event, ride day, the swim, or the run, competition represents a different proposition to training.

The pressure to perform, to hit your personal best drives you to work harder, to push for more – and that’s when you need your nutrition to be spot on.

Having the right pre-event fuelling strategy can ensure your muscle glycogen is maximised, which could extend the time you can perform at your optimal level by up to 20%, and improve your overall performance by 2 – 3%.

Also, having a good pre-event hydration plan can counter sweat losses and dehydration during your event.

If your sport goes for over an hour, your endurance can be extended by up to 1/4, and your power output independently increased by 2 – 3% with the right level of during-event carbohydrates.

Of course, hydration becomes even more important during your event, as the risk of heat exhaustion or heat stroke increases with your level of dehydration.

After all that, there’s the nutrition for your post-game recovery for us to work out!

Nutrition For Resistance Training

Resistance training is another great sport but with very different requirements to endurance sports.

While much attention around weightlifting tends to be on supplements and ‘bro-science’ advice, there are distinct nutritional needs for this sport.

Protein rightly gets a lot of focus as it is important for the muscle recovery that resistance work needs, but weight training athletes don’t always need as much as they’re led to believe.

In fact, having carbohydrates with your recovery protein, in the right ratio, can lead to greater amino acid uptake and muscle growth than protein alone. The timing, type and quality of protein also has an effect.

One of the major factors in muscle recovery and growth, though, is the total amount of food you eat over a day, which can be significant.

The specific levels that are right for you and your training are something that are determined during a nutrition consultation.

Supplements

Then, of course, there are supplements; which ones work, and which ones are legal?

If you’re not a professional athlete, you’ll have access to a broad range of supplements, but no one wants to waste their time or money on ineffective substances.

Some supplements are little better than herbs, but there are some that have been evaluated by peak sporting bodies to be effective in specific situations. They can replenish energy, prevent muscle fatigue, reduce your perception of effort, improve blood flow to muscles and improve hydration.

Some may have minor side-effects, though, and require specific protocols to ‘load up’ on them, which can all be explained as part of a nutritional plan for your training.

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