FIELD
HOCKEY (Also LaCrosse & Team Handball)
Easily
one of the most demanding sports in the world, field hockey
is a game in which conditioning plays as big a role as skill.
Field hockey is played almost constantly on the run, with
many sudden starts, stops, turns, jumps, pivots, and sprints.
Therefore, it's essential to establish a solid nutritional
foundation, an energy and recovery base upon which you can
build your training and competition programs.
Field
hockey requires a variety of skills. You must be a combination
of sprinter, leaper, and even dancer to execute the fundamental
movements of the game. Field hockey conditioning must, therefore,
take into account the most rigorous training and nutritional
program to prepare an athlete for the rigors of a field
hockey season. Greater strength-through proper weight training
and superior conditioning and nutritional efforts will make
you a better player. Through careful application of scientific
training and nutritional practices, your on-field effectiveness
will take a giant step upwards in all areas of the game.
You will see gains in jumping ability, sprinting, endurance
for up and down the field movement over a full game, enhanced
skills while in a fatigued state, superior agility and improved
body control.
The
incredible diversity of skills and energy demands inherent
in the game of field hockey demands careful attention to
your dietary regimen. Here is a list of factors to consider
when you're matching your nutrition to your training needs:
·
You must have high quality protein several times a day (eat
every 2-3 hours)· in order to effectively recover
and repair damaged muscle tissue;
· Explosive athletes (who get their energy from ATP
and CP, two biochemicals formed inside of their muscles)
and middle distance athletes (whose energy comes from sugar--called
glycogen-stored inside their muscles) cannot eat very much
fat because it is not an efficient source of energy for
their high intensity training (which is almost exclusively
anaerobic in nature) -- fat calories are going to get stored
because they can't be used for your energy needs;
· Endurance athletes (whose energy is manufactured
through oxidation) can get away with eating more fat because
they spend a lot of time in the aerobic pathway of muscle
energetics, which uses fat. But even endurance athletes
should keep the fat calories down a bit if they are training
aerobically-with oxygen--for under a half hour. Remember,
fat isn't used for energy until after about 20-30 minutes
of aerobic activity. Until then, energy comes from the athlete's
stores of muscle glycogen.
· A carefully measured supply of high quality carbohydrates
several times throughout the day will insure that your body
is getting all the energy it requires, while the protein
will ensure that muscle repair takes place.
· The carbohydrates in your pre-workout meal should
be comprised of low glycemic index carbohydrates (the kind
that converts to blood sugar very slowly, to ensure that
your training intensity doesn't wane, and to ensure that
lean tissue isn't cannibalized for energy) so, eat carbs
to supplt the energy sources that your muscles use in order
to contract.
