Most of us have heard Allen Iverson’s rant about practice on the TV.  While he says a few things I agree with, he also mentions a few that I don’t.  Mostly the fact that practice doesn’t seem very important.

I’ve played organized and competitive sports for at least twelve years, from Pop Warner through college.  It’s fair to say I’ve gone to a few practices throughout my career.  However, it took me almost those entire twelve years of practice to finally understand and form my thoughts about it.  Here’s what I learned: by changing your mentality towards practice, and with some goal setting, you can improve your practicing and performance during competition.

What’s the point of practice?

Practice is very important, because that’s where you prepare yourself and your team to win games.  Depending on how your practice goes, that determines how your performance will be during competition.  With that being said, it’s not important that you practice injured.  Sacrificing your season for a specific game isn’t worth it, unless that game determines the outcome of the season (ex: playoff games).  Even then, there are extenuating circumstances in determining your need to practice (ex: your opponent isn’t nearly as well prepared or as good as you are).

I prefer to look at it this way: how you train and prepare yourself in the offseason will determine whether you have championship caliber or not.  When it comes time to the season, how you practice determines your performance during individual competitions.  Each competition is like a pin you need to knock down en route to fulfilling your championship potential.  In other words, the offseason determines what your main goal is, and your practicing (which determines game performance) is the small goals that will lead to success of your main goal.

For an example outside of the sports realm, say you want to lose twenty pounds.  So in order to help your achieve your goal, you plan to lose five pounds per month.  Each time you accomplish these smaller goals, you set yourself up to accomplishing the big one.

So…what does all that mean for me?

Practicing well is all about mentality.  If you have the correct mentality, you’ll practice more efficiently and better.  When you attend practice, focus on improving one or two small goals.  That can be footwork on a specific play, knowing where the opposing team’s linebacker will be, improving timing with your teammates, whatever.  By practicing with tangible, attainable goals, you will improve and perform better during your next competition.

Also realize that you need to push yourself.  You need to be challenged to attain new and higher goals.  However, don’t push yourself to the point of injury, or while you are injured.  It makes no sense to practice injured, as you run the risk of not practicing as well as you can and injuring yourself further.  However, realize there is also a difference between hurt and injured.  We all sustain cuts, dings, aches.  You need to determine for yourself whether you’re injured or hurt, and whether you can or can’t practice.

Hopefully, you have learned a few things about the necessity of practice, and how to practice better and more intelligently.  Try goal setting for your next few practices, and see if it helps you out at all.

The prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology has what’s called Open CourseWare.  They have a ton of their classes online, with recorded lectures, assignments, etc, where you can follow along from anywhere in the world and at your own pace.  Best of all, it’s free.  So if you’re looking to futher your education, whether it be through interest of your own, boredom, whatever, take a look at what MIT has to offer.

How alcohol effects you:

Both short-term and long-term alcohol use impairs the body’s ability to synthesize protein.  What does that mean? When we work-out, practice, or compete in games or what-not, our muscles break down.  Our body needs to take the protein we have in our bodies and use that to repair the broken down muscles.  If we consume alcohol before, during, or after we break down our muscles, it makes it hard for us to repair those muscles.  Over time, we can lose any progress we made due to alcohol use.  Alcohol also directly hinders our endurance.

Alcohol consumption leads to dehydration.  This is important, because we need to be properly hydrated at all times.  If we’re dehydrated, not only will our athletic performance suffer, we can do serious damage to our bodies and even die.  Also, we can’t drink and be dehydrated, then drink a lot of water the following day expecting to be properly hydrated.  Our bodies don’t work that way.

ATP production (Athlete Nutrition 101: Part 2) is also hindered by alcohol consumption.  Many people believe that alcohol use leads to quality sleep.  That’s far from the truth.  Alcohol disrupts our sleep patterns, thereby making it difficult for our body to repair itself during sleep.

Alcohol use affects your brain in a multitude of ways. We can have problems retaining, learning, and recalling information, which can immediately impact your performance both on the field and in the classroom.  Your coach wouldn’t be too happy if you can’t remember plays, or even participate due to poor grades, because of your alcohol use.  Alcohol use can also alter the brain’s makeup, leading to, among other things, alcohol addiction.

Alcohol also has a tremendous impact on your nutrition program.  It can hinder you from absorbing and utilizing nutrients you need.  It makes it much harder to maintain your weight, as alcohol is full of calories with little or no nutritional value.

Finally, alcohol affects your emotions.  Short-term and long-term alcohol use has been shown to really mess with your emotions.  Alcohol makes you a much more emotional person.  It can make you experience mood swings over things that never bothered you before.  In the middle of a game when things go wrong, you need to be able to think clearly.  Not doing so can have dire consequences on your individual performance, as well as on other team members.  I don’t imagine your coach would be happy if you received a penalty for something minor with the game on the line.

Basically, it’s like this…

If you want to be the best athlete you can be, regardless of whether you’re inseason or out, alcohol use is going to prevent you from reaching your goal.  No if’s, and’s, or but’s about it.  Not to mention all the other repercussions that can occur from the law and from your school if you’re under the legal age.  Being a professional in whatever you do, even if you’re not getting paid, means you do the little things the right way.  Refraining from using alcohol is just one of those things that goes a long way to making you the best athlete you can be.

Further Reading: For more information, I strongly suggest reading the NCAA pamphlet Alcohol and Athletic Performance, which is where I got some information for this post.  It’s a quick read, and it’s full of useful information.

So please, take the time to drop me an email at dominic@athleteresourcecenter.com or to add a comment to this post about what you want/need more information about.  I’d be more than happy to accommodate any/all questions.

I’m here to help and educate you.

Brown University has a great Sports Nutrition page with a ton of information on it.  They cover:

• Nutrition needs of athletes vs non-athletes
• How many servings you need per day
• How much protein, carbohydrates, and fat you need
• How much calcium, iron, and other vitamins and minerals you need
• Information about supplements (which I agree with, that supplements are a waste of money)
• Pre-competition and pre-exercise meals
• Post-competition and post-exercise meals
• Hydration and the athlete
• The vegetarian athlete
• Exercising too much
• And other resources to turn to for more information

Colorado State University also has a great page about nutrition for the athlete, however it doesn’t have as much information on it.  It’s still good to check it out though, as getting information from various sources helps you determine potential biases and so forth.

Clearly they have a ton of useful information that you need to be aware of.  Better yet, they’re both highly respected universities, so you know the information is credible.  So check them out.  You’re severely limiting your performance by not knowing this valuable information and utilizing it in your life.

While I suggest you read the article, I realize not everyone will want to.  Due to that, I’ll give you the rundown: dynamic stretching is better than static stretching.  Why?  Because static stretching leads to strength loss in the muscles, while dynamic stretching leads to increased blood flow, improved range of motion, and warmed up muscles/tendons/ligaments.

What’s dynamic stretching?  Examples are butt-kickers, karaoke, walking lunges, shuffling, etc.

Like I said, give it a read as it’s quick to read and it has some good supplementary information.

What should we know about the basics of athlete nutrition?

We know that nutrition is basically the foods we eat, and how our bodies use the nutrients from those foods.  Next, we looked at the following types of nutrients: carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and water.  What do we need to know about these nutrients?

• Carbohydrates come in two types: simple carbs (monosaccharides) which we digest quickly (example: sugar), and complex carbs (polysaccharides) which it takes us awhile to digest (example: whole wheat bread).  One gram of a carbohydrate is equal to four calories (remember that calories are basically units of energy food gives us).  We also want carbohydrates to be the majority of our diet, as they’re the best source of energy for us.

• Fats come in three types: unsaturated fats which are the best for us (example: olive oil), saturated fats which are not good for us (example: fat on a steak), and trans-fats which we don’t want to eat at all (example: snacks).  One gram of fat is equal to nine calories, and we generally want 10% of our diet or less to be fat (approximately 3% of that 10 is saturated fat).  Fat isn’t our best source of energy even though it gives nine calories, because it can only be used under certain conditions.

• Proteins: they’re made up of amino acids, and one gram of protein is equal to four calories.  Proteins are also the main building block of muscle, hair, etc, and they come from foods such as eggs, meat, soy products, milk, etc.  Our protein consumption should be the remainder of our diet.  For example, 65% carbohydrate, 10% fat (at most 3% of which are saturated), and 25% protein.  Also, we generally don’t want our protein to be used as energy, as its more important for it to be used for other purposes.

• Water is needed every day.  We need to stay hydrated at all times,  when we exercise/compete and when we don’t.  Not only will our performance suffer drastically if we aren’t properly hydrated, serious health complications and even death can occur.

OK, so now we’ve got all the basics down.  How does our body use this stuff?

First of all, recall that ATP is what our cells actually use for fuel.  Throughout our day our body is taking our stored fuel and using that to produce ATP, which it then uses.  Because we’re not working too hard, our body uses aerobic respiration.  In a nutshell, aerobic respiration is what we use at all times, except when we’re working so hard that we’re not taking in enough oxygen.  It’s a nice, easy, and efficient way for our body to create ATP.

Our body uses aerobic respiration until we’re not getting enough oxygen to our muscles.  At that point, our body uses the anaerobic respiration system.  An example of this would be when we’re doing 50 yard sprints.  Because we’re running so hard, we’re not able to take in enough oxygen that our body needs, so it naturally switches to the anaerobic system.

However, we can’t use this system for very long.  A by-product of anaerobic respiration is lactic acid.  Lactic acid builds up in the muscles being used, and eventually that build-up causes a decrease in our performance.  Ever wonder why after running a few sprints, your legs get heavy and tired?  That’s lactic acid build-up.

So what does exercise have to do with nutrition?

When we exercise/compete, we burn through our energy stores, not to mention we may be breaking muscle down in the process (such as during weight lifting).  We need to compensate for our expenditures, or our performance will suffer.

For example, say you’re a cross country runner.  You practice throughout the week, and come the day of the meet, you’re exhausted.  Chances are, you’re not taking in enough carbohydrates.  Think of your energy level as a set of stairs: each time you practice, you take a step down them.  Due to not taking in enough carbohydrates, you never get back to where you were before the prior practice.  Your energy started out on stair 10, but by the time meet comes, it’s on stair 6.  No wonder why you’re not performing as well as you can.

Bonus: 5 Nutrition Tips!

1. Count your calorie expenditure and intake.  It helps you achieve your goals more easily.  I prefer MyPyradmidTracker.gov
2. Eat breakfast! Not only does this benefit us mentally, it can replenish some of the energy used during sleep.
3. Sip water throughout your day. It’s a very easy way to stay hydrated while not exercising/competing.
4. Eat a good lunch. Many athletes, especially those in high school, don’t eat nutritious lunches.  It’s just as important as breakfast.
5. Monitor your weight. A pound here or there isn’t anything to be too worried about, however if you see yourself constantly losing weight, your diet is lacking.

In conclusion…

By knowing how what you eat affects your performance, you can make better nutrition decisions.  Those decisions in turn can positively impact your athletic performance.  It’s all a part of doing the little things correctly to add up to one phenomenal athlete.

I strongly suggest you read this article, as it’s a quick and full of useful information.

Because Wikipedia is one of the best free online sources for information today, I’m pointing you their way for this post.  (Please, use Wikipedia intelligently.  Most of this information is general knowledge type stuff (although some is advanced), and doesn’t require some more credible sources.)  Read what I list below (or more if you’d like), as I’m going to write a bigger post on nutrition connecting many of the dots shortly.  This will help you understand that post better.  Also, some of the stuff may be confusing as to how it connects to nutrition (such as aerobic and anaerobic exercise), but it does.  Bear with me.

The building blocks of nutrition

Nutrition - Read the following sections: Overview, Nutrients, Carbohydrates, Fat, Protein, Water, and the entire sports nutrition section.

Calorie - Read the overview.

Energy, and how/when our body uses it

ATP - Read the overview.

Aerobic respiration - Read the overview and the aerobic respiration part to glycolysis.

Anaerobic respiration - Read the overview.

Aerobic exercise - Read the overview, aerobic vs anaerobic exercise, and aerobic capacity.

Anaerobic exercise - Read the overview and lactate threshold.

Take the time to read everything outlined (it shouldn’t take more than thirty minutes to an hour), and write down anything that confuses you or that you have questions about.  In the next post I’ll connect many of the dots, and answer any questions you may have.

Such findings do not prove that talent doesn’t exist. But they do suggest an intriguing possibility: that if it does, it may be irrelevant.