Like any dedicated athlete, a serious baseball player needs a diet and a lifestyle that is tailored to their needs. There is no point in competing if you aren’t going to do your best, and that requires health and fitness. When you think about it, baseball requires a large number of physical qualities: Strength, speed, agility, timing, hand-eye coordination, and more.
Hydration
Baseball requires fast-paced running, quick decision-making, concentration, coordination, and ball handling skills. Research shows that dehydration can increase skill errors, and reduce attention and vitiate speed and collaboration. Thus, staying hydrated throughout the game is critical.
In order to stay hydrated, players should drink fluids ahead, during, and after games. This same focus on drinking fluids should be maintained during practice and exercises.
An individual’s rate of perspiration determines how important fluid input he should have. All players need to be hydrated, but some need further than others if they sweat more. You should drink regularly throughout a game and during practice to maintain the right position of hydration.
Hydration helps combat fatigue, so it’s important that players hydrate indeed before playing in the game. Drink fluids regularly throughout the day leading up to a game, or during weight training and practice. Having a commodity to drink with every meal is a good way to stay in the habit and keep situations up.
Eating Before Competing
Our Australian nutritionist musketeers tell us that it’s a good idea to eat a nutritional meal before contending. They recommend eating the meal 3-4 hours before the launch of a game. This way, you have an acceptable time to digest the food and you won’t get muscle cramps. It’s recommended that you choose foods that are fairly low in fiber and fat. Fiber and fat are a little harder to digest than carbohydrates and protein, so your pre-game meal should substantially correspond to about 70 carbs to 40 protein. Eggs and toast, beef stir-shindig, and ignited sap are each great choices for the pre-game meal.
Some have experimented with a liquid interpretation of the pre-game meal, as solid food is more likely to be heaved during violent exertion. When we look at the results of the trials, we can see a couple of intriguing effects. First, the liquid meal was just as effective as a solid meal( at least according to these experimenters). Second, the pre-game meal resulted in better strength and endurance, less dryness in the mouth, and lower fatigue overall.
Recovery Nutrition
After a game, your recovery nutrition is veritably important. At this time, your body is repairing the minor damage that it has suffered, and you need to make sure that the repairs can be done easily.
Recovery nutrition should contain a decent quantum of protein, and it isn’t a bad idea to condense it with some kind of amino acid. There are numerous amino acid supplements out there, from creatine to BCAA composites and numerous others. Amino acids play a pivotal part in muscle form that shouldn’t be undervalued. In fact, this study set up that certain amino acids can be used as direct energy by the body during exercise.
At the same time, you still want the maturity of your diet to be carbohydrates. Baseball games can be veritably long and challenging, as baseball is one of the only professional sports without a time limit. Sure, a player might spend some time standing on a base or sitting on the sidelines, but these games can go on for a long time. As such, you need to front-load with lots of carbs to ensure that you have enough energy to get through those games.
From a recovery viewpoint, you need to replenish the glycogen stores that you lost during the game. To put it simply, glycogen is a form of short-term energy that’s generally deduced from carbohydrates in the diet. Unlike fat, which is a form of stored energy, carb-produced glycogen can be used right down. That’s why a higher-carb diet is a great way to replenish your energy after a long and challenging game.
Go Heavy On The Carbs
You have presumably noticed that this diet is veritably heavy on carbs. The reasons for this have formerly been explained, so there’s only one further point to make: The significance of high-quality carbohydrates. Technically, those greasy fried sticks of potato that you get at a fast-food restaurant are carbohydrates. Still, they aren’t high-quality carbs. When you’re using carbs as your primary source of energy, don’t make the mistake of allowing any old carbs to do.
Fats
Fat is burned to satisfy the need for energy. The average diet contains more fat than the body needs, so to keep fit and still get the right quantum of fat to play baseball, your diet should include 15 to 20% fat content.
The best way to eat fat and avoid unnecessary weight gain requires some adjustments when preparing your food.
Broil food instead of frying, poaching, or steaming.
Remove the skin from chicken and fish.
Drink skim milk and water. Avoid carbonated, sweetened, or energy drinks except as a snack.
Substitute chicken or fish for red meat whenever possible
Avoid foods that are packed in oil.
The Significance Of A Well Balanced Breakfast
Breakfast is important for performance and overall health. It’s an early-morning refueling stop for your body. After 8-12 hours without a meal or snack, your body needs to be replenished with energy and fluid. It’s true what they say about breakfast – it’s the most important meal of the day.
Breakfast replenishes glucose situations in the body to bring it to a healthy position in blood sugar.
Breakfast with the right ingredients will always increase the stamina a player has for the rest of the day. In addition, it helps increase strength and helps players endure the three hours or more the ball game lasts.
According to recent research in athlete nutrition, it was set up that a good breakfast acts as a mood enhancer, as well as improves alertness, attention, mental performance, motivation, and memory.
A breakfast that includes the right foods for ball players also decreases the chances of snacking during the day on high-fat content foods that can make players sluggish as well as bring about weight gain.
Because the body has been dormant and without food input for 8-10 hours prior to the breakfast meal, it’s critically important to get as many vitamins, minerals and fluids as you can to get your body to reach a competitive position.
