Nutritional Advice

What you eat has an important influence on your tennis performance. James Drabble, our recommended personal trainer from Positive Impact Fitness, has written the following article for us focusing on exercise, nutrition and rest.

James Drabble – Positive Impact Fitness

When taking part in any sporting activity it is vitally important to maintain a balance between training, nutrition and rest in order for you to achieve your goals. All 3 areas are just as important as each other, and if you neglect one of these areas then you are unlikely to progress further in your chosen activity.

Rest or recovery are also vitally important. Having rest days, allowing time to recover after training and getting to bed at a decent time will all enable your body to repair any damage caused by training and allow you to feel fully recovered before your next session. Did you know…. that your body makes all of its physiological repair between 10pm and 2am, and its psychological and emotional repair between 2am and 6am whilst asleep every night? Therefore if you go to bed at midnight you have lost 50% of your bodies chance to make its physiological recovery! If you do this continually over the course of a week or even a month and your body will start to break down, you may become more susceptible to illness, you may start to pick up injuries and at the very least your performance will start to deteriorate.

Finally nutrition, the food you eat provides your fuel that you need to exercise. You often hear the phrase ‘eat a balanced diet’, well what does that mean? More importantly what is a balanced diet for you? Everyone has their own opinion about what a balanced diet is and to be honest without looking at individuals 7 day food diary along with training schedule it is very hard to comment. However, needless to say getting your nutrition right is also massively important. The three main areas that people always seem to struggle with when it comes to nutrition are; eating too late at night, too many carbohydrates & not enough protein and finally not enough water.

So why are these three areas so important? Well firstly why are you eating so late at night? You have finished your day, you have done your training and at very best all you are going to do is sit down watch television and then go to bed. All those calories are then going to be stored as fat with the result being that you put on weight! Secondly most people who exercise, hugely over estimate how many carbohydrates they need to eat in order to perform, the result being that their carbohydrate/protein balance is way off, again causing them to store all of the unused carbohydrate, instead of which they could have eaten more protein which will actually benefit them in the development and repair of their muscles post exercise. Finally, most of the population don’t drink nearly enough water. Now when I’m talking about water; tea, coffee, squash or juice doesn’t count. The cells in your body are made of water and in order for your body to remain correctly hydrated and perform optimally you need to be drinking between 2-3 litres of water a day, this amount may also increase if you are training or if it is a hot day.