Our Official Nutrition supplier, OTE, have shared five nutrition tips to help prepare you for event season.
1. Lay the foundations with a healthy, balanced diet – Getting your daily meals correct is paramount to completing quality training, improving your performance and recovery optimally.
A meal that srikes a balance between carbohydrates, protein and healthy fats is what you’re aiming for as this will support refuelling, recovery and general health.
2. Periodise your food like your training – We’re often creatures of habit, but we’d never do the exact same training every day to reach our race goal. And the same principle applies to food. Consider the volume of exercise you’re doing and adapt your food intake accordingly.
In bigger volume training blocks increase your meal sizes or add more snacks (such as the OTE Anytime Bar) to support your nutritional needs. Equally, the quantity of food you consume can be less in a rest week.
3. Hydration helps – Are you guilty of carrying full bottles round bike rides, or neglecting drinking altogether at the pool? As little as 2% loss of body weight due to dehydration can negatively affect your performance; so getting into good drinking habits now, should mean it’s second nature come race day.
Sipping little often is best and the addition of Hydro Tabs to your water adds electrolytes which, promotes rehydration, and helps prevent cramping by replacing the salts lost through sweating.
4. The power of recovery nutrition – Hard training depletes your carbohydrate stores, fluid levels and damages muscles. If you’re wanting to complete quality training again the next day, you need to give some thought to nutrition for recovery. Trying to consume something that contains carbohydrates to replenish energy stores, protein to help with muscle repair and fluid to aid rehydration, within 30 minutes of finish you training, will help kick-start the recovery process.
That’s where the OTE recovery drinks come in handy. With both a whey and soya version to offer, we should have recovery covered for most athletes.
5. Practice your race day nutrition - This is simple. From assessing energy levels and timings; to getting into the packaging and choosing product preferences when exercising at intensity. Eliminate all the unknowns by trialing your energy drinks, gels and bars before the big day.
Don’t forget you can get 20% off the full OTE Sports nutrition range with the code BTOTE22. It’s now the perfect time to stock up ahead of events season.
