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This
week's newsletter contains the following:
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For
a report and 8-week training programme on the
training method that should be put before all
others, click
here
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9
Injury Prevention Tips
(1)
Avoid training when you are tired. Tired muscles provide
inadequate support for tendons, ligaments, and bones,
increasing the risk of strains, sprains, and stress
fractures.
(2) Make sure that you increase your consumption of
carbohydrate during periods of heavy training. Muscles
which are low on carbohydrate are tired muscles, leading
to the problem mentioned in recommendation No. 1. If
you're an endurance athlete, you need about 200-225
calories of carbohydrate per stone of body weight during
strenuous training.
(3) Continuing to build on the 'fatigue produces injury'
theme, you should bear in mind that increases in
training necessitate increases in resting, too. Anytime
your training volume increases by more than 2-3 per
cent, you need to make sure that you're getting more
sleep and taking more time to rest during the day.
Otherwise, you're not really training; you're trying to
tear yourself down.
(4) Remember a key principle of training: total training
time doesn't automatically build upon itself. If you've
been training for three hours per week, for example,
that does NOT mean that you're ready to step up to three
and one-half hours per week. Any increase in training
should be preceded by an increase in strengthening so
that your body is really ready to take on the new load.
Runners, for example, should go through a strengthening
period emphasising drills to boost leg-muscle power
before they attempt a significant upswing in mileage.
Tennis or squash players should work on their shoulders
and legs before they upgrade their playing time.
(5) Be especially careful if you're a relative newcomer
to your sport. If you've only been participating in it
for a few months, you're much more likely to be injured,
compared to someone who's been active for several years,
simply because the latter individual has had more time
to strengthen the appropriate muscles and connective
tissues.
(6) Treat even seemingly minor injuries very carefully
to prevent them from blowing up into big problems.
Remember the time-honored acronym RICE--rest, ice,
compression, and elevation--when a small injury strikes.
Rest gives the afflicted area time to heal, ice reduces
inflammation and swelling, and compression and elevation
lessen swelling, promoting healing.
(7) Working with your doctor, take anti-inflammatory
medications to control pain and reduce inflammation and
swelling which occur as a result of your sports
activity.
(8) If you experience pain during a workout, stop your
training session immediately. A temporary loss in
training time and fitness is far better than long-term
damage to your body. Many athletes produce chronic
deterioration of a knee joint or another anatomical
region by insisting on training through pain. Remember
that you're in sport for the long run; a lost month of
training to rehabilitate a damaged knee is much better
than having to quit your sport completely sometime in
the future because of joint degeneration.
(9) If you want to toughen your training without raising
your risk of injury too much, another good strategy is
to slightly raise your average training intensity
(speed), instead of tacking on lots of additional volume
(miles) of running, cycling, swimming, or walking.
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In
two of the most recent issues of Sports Injury
Bulletin we tell you about the latest findings
within proprioceptive training. We explain how
you can quickly train and protect your muscles
by doing very simple exercises - and the results
are fantastic! Click
here to read them.
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The
benefit of carbohydrate intake during team games
Almost
everyone knows that endurance athletes have an increased
need for dietary carbohydrate, but it's often forgotten
that participants in the most popular sport in the
world, soccer, also have high carbohydrate requirements.
Unfortunately, recent research suggests that soccer
players fall far short of their nutritional goals.
Why is soccer such a carbohydrate-depleting sport?
Scientific investigations show that soccer players cover
at least 9000-10000 metres during a typical match, with
midfielders covering the most distance and centre backs
moving the least. Players jog for about 37 per cent of
the total distance (3700 metres), cruise (run at fairly
high - but not maximal - speed) around 20 per cent of
the time (2000 metres), walk for 25 per cent, and move
backwards for around 6 per cent.
Actual sprints are usually 10-40 metres in length and
total about 800 metres during the 90 minutes of play. In
addition, there is a change of speed or direction every
4-5 seconds, and players' heart rates are usually above
150 beats per minute.
Blood lactate levels often rise to 6-10 millimoles per
litre, comparable to the concentrations commonly
observed during 5K- 10K running competitions.
Overall, soccer playing is precisely the kind of
exercise, intermittent but intense, which rapidly
depletes leg muscles of their carbohydrate (glycogen)
stores.
The scientific analyses have uncovered three especially
important facts about soccer:
(1) Soccer players' average leg-muscle concentrations of
glycogen are surprisingly low, in fact no better than
those observed in sedentary people. This is fairly
shocking news, since athletes usually have higher than
normal glycogen stores.
(2) Performance during the first half of a soccer match
is probably not harmed by the low glycogen
concentrations.
(3) Performance during the second half is negatively
affected by the lack of glycogen. Why do soccer players
have such low fuel supplies?
One factor is simply that soccer practices can be long
(up to three hours), which promotes glycogen depletion.
However, the other problem is the soccer player’s
diet.
Surveys have shown that just 48-50 per cent of the
calories in soccer-players' diets come from carbohydrate
(the recommended intake is 60-70 per cent), while a
whopping 35-42 per cent of calories come from fat (a
better total would be 15-20 per cent). Overall, soccer
players eat only 300 grams of carbohydrate per day,
while a preferred intake would be about 400-450 grams.
To determine the actual impact of low muscle glycogen on
performance, noted Swedish exercise physiologist Bengt
Saltin studied soccer players who competed with either
normal or 50-per cent- below-normal glycogen
concentrations.
During the match, the high-glycogen group ran and walked
for a total of 12,000 total metres, while the
low-glycogen group covered only 10,000 metres.
Importantly, the high group ran 9,000 metres and walked
just 3,000 metres, but the low group ran 5,000 metres
and walked 5,000 metres.
After the match, the high-group members had retained
just 10 per cent of their muscle glycogen, while the low
group's glycogen was nonexistent. During the match, the
low group had simply run out of glycogen; their muscles
then began to rely more heavily on fat for energy. Since
fat can support only low-intensity exercise, the
low-glycogen players were forced to walk.
Given the low carbohydrate status of the soccer players,
it's not surprising that carbohydrate supplementation
has been shown to be beneficial. In one scientific
study, athletes consumed sports drinks containing
glucose polymers before a soccer game and at halftime,
while other players drank plain water. The extra glucose
didn't do a thing during the first half, but
glucose-supplemented players increased their total
distance covered during play by 20 per cent in the
second half and improved their amount of high-speed
running by 30 per cent, compared to the tap-water
drinkers.
What's the bottom line?
Soccer players should increase their daily carbohydrate
intake and ingest a carbohydrate-containing beverage
before their games and during the halftime break. In
fact, it's wise to sip a bit of sports drink whenever
play stops for even a short period of time, as during an
injury time-out, for example.
Taking in added carbohydrate will boost running speeds
during the second halves of competitions and will help
players attain both their nutritional and their soccer
goals.
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The
Essential Carbohydrates Report tells you
everything you ever wanted to know – and a lot
more besides – about your body’s
carbohydrate needs during training, recovery,
pre-competition and competition. Click
here to read it.
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Yours,
Sylvester Stein
Chairman
How To Win
How
To Win is a weekly newsletter from Electric Word plc,
67-71 Goswell Road, London, EC1V 7EP United Kingdom.
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