Sports Performance Academy Blog

If you're ready to level up your nutrition, click here to check out Stay Fueled: Nutrition for Busy Families.

Summary

Have you ever wanted to feed your family the right food, but not even make it a whole week before winding up back in the fast food line? Maybe you know how important it is to get great quality food into your athlete, but you don't take the time to write down what's on the plan for this week?

Not making nutrition a priority is extremely common and it's why so many of our athlete's are struggling to progress, and to stay healthy. 

Here's our success formula to make sure your mindset surrounding nutrition is right on track!

1. Get Ultra-Focused On The Importance Of Nutrition

What we focus our attention on becomes our priority. Not only is nutrition vitally important to your athlete's health, proper nutrition will make your athlete a better student. It will also give them the energy they need to be amazing when playing their sport. 

You have to decide...

Summary

Does your family get enough sleep? Or do you often wake up tired? I know I’ve been in the not enough sleep camp before…but it’s not a good place to be, so I want to give you a few helpful tips on how to maximize sleep. 

Sleep is critical. It will help increase your athlete’s performance in their sport, helps them get ready for school, and helps clear their mind, both physiologically and mentally. It’s like a mental reset that we really need to take full advantage of.

Start by knowing how much sleep your kids need:

• Under the age of 12, they need 10-12 hours of sleep each night.
• Over the age of 12, they need 8-10 hours of sleep each night. 

These recommended hours of sleep needed are Non-Negotiable if you want your athlete to be successful. Athletes that get 6 or less hours of sleep increase their chance of injury by over 70%. That is a shockingly high chance for injury! I definitely don’t want to risk that for my kids, and...

Get Started with STAY FUELED: NUTRITION FOR BUSY FAMILIES by clicking here right now! 

Summary

What are the basics you need to be successful in nutrition?

Are you overwhelmed with feeding your athlete? Not sure if you’re doing it right? Maybe you know that you could definitely do better, but not sure where to start? Well you’re in the right place, because I want to share the basics so you can get on track and know for sure you are giving your athlete exactly what they need.

It DOESN”T have to be complicated, but it DOES matter what your athlete eats. Food fuels their bodies, and if they aren’t eating QUALITY whole foods, it’s a recipe for disaster.

Let’s start with WHAT TO EAT:

The 3 main things you need to focus on are CARBOHYDRATES, FATS, and PROTEINS. These are the macronutrients of their diets. (We don’t need to focus on micronutrients right now, if the quality of their food is great, they will be getting what they need)

So...

Summary

Athletes….they aren’t machines (although sometimes we treat them like they are) THEY ARE PEOPLE! And sometimes, they just need a break.

If you’ve never heard of overtraining syndrome, it’s when the body really starts to shut down when there have been too many energy and physical requirements put on it. Maybe they’re doing extra work and really pushing it, or trying to progress, but it’s our job as parents to look at that and figure out when it’s time to pull back and take a little break and start recovering better. 

If your athlete is following the athletic pyramid in the proper order (-Nutrition and Hydration-Rest and Recovery-Proper Movement-Strength-Skills), then you can look at the following clues to tell if your athlete needs a break:

• They stop progressing- they’re no longer moving up in skills (weekly, monthly), they’re not even getting little wins; they’re just struggling to do anything in the gym or...

Summary

Are you looking to make your athlete’s school day the best possible experience ever? 

I bet you didn’t even think about this, but it absolutely starts with nutrition and feeding them the right things, so let’s make sure they are eating what their body needs for success!

It’s definitely going to take some time to get your athlete on track, and it might mean you have to make slow changes over time, but you can do it!

Give Them The Good Stuff

At the Sports Performance Academy, we always look at making sure we have the best macronutrients that we can afford. Here’s what each macronutrient does, and how it best fuels your athlete’s body:

1. Carbohydrates- they fuel the brain! If your athlete isn’t eating really great carbohydrates, their brain isn’t going to have the energy that it needs to be able to learn. This goes for their sport too, they need carbs to be able to think through complex processes and perform well.
2. Fats- up to...

Summary

Have you ever had your athlete get in the car after practice and say, "Mom, I'm craving a hamburger!"

I have! That just happened to me 2 days ago after a hard run. I was craving chocolate and it was almost all I could think about.

These cravings are really important for our athletes because it's their brain telling them something their body needs. Maybe it's the muscles saying they need more of something, or maybe it's an essential mineral they're lacking.

Young athletes are still very in tune with what their bodies need and it's important that we not ignore these cravings. Cravings can give us great insight into what our athletes need.

Here's what is most important though... Just because your athlete is craving something, doesn't mean we need to end up in a drive through getting less than quality food.

If they're craving a hamburger, make a delicious one at home with grass fed beef. If they're craving a taco, make them a chicken or fish taco at home. If they want...

Have you ever been told that back pain is normal? That everyone has it, and it’s just something you have to learn to deal with? Well it’s NOT TRUE! Back pain is not normal, and just because it may be common, does not mean you should listen to the crowd that told you it is. It could be an indicator of a very serious injury that should not be ignored!

If your athlete is having any of the following symptoms, IT’S TIME TO BE SEEN!

1. 1. Pain that lasts more than 2 weeks--check in with your primary care, but don’t stop there...it’s important that you find someone that understands sports. Your athlete needs to be seen by a professional that specializes in their specific sport.
2. 2. Any change/control of bowel or bladder--urinating on self (accidents), can’t control #2 (defecation), leaking when they didn’t before, urgency to go to the bathroom, abdominal pain along with the back pain…go to the doctor IMMEDIATELY! There may be issues with the...

Summary

Why Is Recovery So Important?

When we don’t get recovery right, our athletes have a big decrease in energy. I see it in the gym and get emails all the time about overuse injuries (heel pain, knee pain, wrist pain, elbow pain, lower back pain, etc.) which are all due to not recovering properly.

When we see recovery become a priority, all sorts of great things that happen!

1. Cells are able to store energy, which will give them lots of energy for the next practice

2. Their body will have the ability to adapt to training and go even above where they were at the start of training

3. Less anxiety, more mentally strong when they are getting fully recovered between practices

The biggest part of recovery (and the base of the Athletic Pyramid) is Nutrition and Hydration, eating the right foods at the right times, and hydrating.

The next step up on the pyramid and The BIGGEST Takeawayfrom this video: SLEEP

If under the age of 12, they NEED 10-12 hours of sleep EACH NIGHT

If...

Summary

This video came up from our Nutrition = Performance Seminar when a young athlete went to her coach after the seminar and asked, "Coach, how do I eat this much food?!?"

That's a great question and one that I never thought of for a young athlete. We definitely don't want your athlete getting overwhelmed and we want to give you as parents great strategies to help your athletes eat the best food.

So how do we get great food into our athlete's diet? We've identified 3 points and here they are:

1. Encourage your athlete
2. Use high-density foods like superfoods
3. Be creative

We also want to make sure we add all of these ideas into our Road Map to Success. The Road Map makes sure we eat throughout the day, and when you implement the Road Map, the rest of this will be easy!

1. Encourage Your Athlete, Never Force

If you're just starting this whole road to amazing nutrition, your athlete might not yet be convinced that this is the best way forward for them, so it's always best to encourage...

Like and share with your friends that might want a Nutrition Seminar in their gym!

Summary

Each and every time we do a Nutrition = Performance Seminar with our athletes, Dr. Josh spends time answering all of their questions.

This is amazing because you get to learn exactly what your athlete is thinking about nutrition, but also about performance as a whole.

The great thing is they are a little different each time.

We wanted to share this with you so you can get some great information in a bit of a different setting....live!

Here are some of the questions:
- Health benefits to vegan vs. vegetarian diets
- How much water do we need each day?
- Why do we need to sleep?
- What do you eat every day?
- Can we have ice cream every day?
- Can we still eat junk food?
- and a few more!

Here's the best part about nutrition: When we eat the right food at the right time, we see our athletes be able to do amazing things both in the gym (or on the field, court, or diamond) and in life!

If you don't know...