020 - Kelsey Poulter - Game Day Nutrition – Fourth Quarter Energy, Tournament Hacks & 4-2-1-0-1

Welcome to the Next Level Athletes Podcast. Today we are diving into all things game day nutrition, tournament nutrition, how to fuel your body during the game. Okay, you guys are working so freaking hard training, going to practices, doing your skill work, the full-time job. I always say that not implementing the nutrition is like working a 40-hour week and only cashing in for 10 of those hours. It just doesn't make sense. You're gonna play okay, but you're not going to play to your maximum potential. And we want you to cash in for all 40 of those hours. If you're going to be using your body, you need to put fuel in it. If you are going to be driving a car, you need to put fuel in it. Your body is the car in this instance, and I'm going to teach you guys how to fuel up for the game specifically. Okay, so we're going to break it down to us into a super simple framework that you guys can follow. It's called the 4-2-1-0-1 framework. This is the framework that all of elite athletes use before their games and even before their practices in order to stay very fueled and to have structure behind it and remember what to do. So to preface this, ideally you guys aren't going to be waiting till the day of the big game or the big meet, the big race, to be fueling your body. Ideally you're going to be eating well the whole week prior, right? Like, you can't just like eat like crap the whole entire week and then just say, okay, it's game day, I'm gonna do my best now. You really need to make sure that you're eating well all the way up into it, especially the night before, having a really solid meal. And I'll talk to you about what we want that to look like. The night before your game or your event, you want a very solid meal, lots of carbs, good amounts of protein, healthy fats, fruits and vegetables to get your body right and to get it so it's ready to roll the next day. I should say that it is very hard to give generalized, across-the-board information because every athlete and every body is so different. That being said, take your sport, take your size into consideration when I'm giving numbers and kind of giving references and general guidelines, and then you'll be able to tweak them. Like, if you are a 200-pound athlete, you're a linebacker, and your intensity level is super high, then you're going to probably be needing even more than I'm talking about. If you're a 130-pound athlete and maybe you're a runner and you're putting a lot of mileage on, again, you might need to be eating a little bit more than what I'm talking about. And so I'm going to be giving you guys general guidelines, but be smart. Like, if you try these and you're like, I still feel hungry, or I still feel like I, I don't have enough gas in the tank, eat more. Like, don't, don't just follow exactly what I say to a tee because we aren't personally working together right now. Unfortunately, you're not one of my one-on-one clients right now or working with me in the pro— in my programs. And so I'm not able to give you guys a very specific to your body, to your height, to your weight, to your position, to your sport meal plan. And so I'm going to do my best in giving you guys what you need, but just remember to kind of tweak it and, and know that you can adjust it if it doesn't feel right in your body. Okay, so night before, and ideally every meal is going to be looking like this, is the Performance Plate. The Power Performance Plate. It's going to be half of your plate the complex carbohydrates. And I say complex, like I don't want you to eating quick, easy cereal. You could do rolled oats or steel-cut oats, that's totally fine. A fourth of your plate, you want it to be protein, protein sources. So ideally meat, you could do cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, anything like that. And then the other, the rest of your plate, you want to fill it up with fruits and veggies. I say at least 2 colors to start. That could be a cup of carrots and that can be a whole apple just sliced up. And then with the healthy fats, I always want healthy fats in there too. You can throw some avocado on top of that plate. You can cook your meat in good olive oil or avocado oil, and that will give you some awesome healthy fats as well. So hopefully you have a good idea of what the performance plate looks like. We really just wanna focus on lots of carbs, moderate protein, good sources of healthy fat, and then at least 2 colors. And then obviously you wanna be hydrating and having a couple cups of water during that time as well. Then we'll come to game day. Most— it depends if you're a runner, if you're, you know, a basketball player, of what times your games are going to be at, your events are going to be at. But for now, I will be— I'm going to just kind of be talking about team sports. So when you're playing in the evenings, 5, 6, 7 PM, 4 hours before, you are going to be having one of those performance plates that I just mentioned. This is 4 hours before game time, not necessarily warm-ups, but before tip-off in that sense. So if you play at 7 PM, this is— 3 o'clock is going to be your last big meal before your game. And a lot of people are like, well, how do I do that with school? How do I do that? Like, it's kind of hard. Yeah, it takes some planning ahead and stuff. Like, you can pack an extra turkey sandwich with, you know, fruits and vegetables and stuff on the side. Um, you can make it work if you want to make it work. It's kind of what I always like to say. So in this, you're going to want to have at least 60 to 100 grams of carbohydrates. You want to load your body up, and, and your body has these little storage tanks in its muscles called glycogen storages. Glycogen is basically like your fuel tank. This is where your gas goes into. The gas that fills up those glycogen storages, or those muscle energy tanks, is carbs. Carbs are the gas to your tanks, especially if you're a high-intensity sport where you're sprinting, you're cutting, you're moving, you're stopping, you're sprinting, you're cutting. If you are one of those sports, you need carbohydrates and they are your best friends, I promise you that. So you want about 60 to 100 grams of carbs in that meal, and then you want moderate protein as well. You have 4 hours before your game time, you can digest it. So like around 30 grams of protein would be amazing for your body to be having to kind of prep your muscle, allow it to recover from the week from the week prior and allow you to just kind of get ready, um, to roll for the game that night. The reason why we want to do this is because, A, like I said, it's going to build your energy stores so you're not going to be crashing mid-game. B, it should keep you pretty full till the game and help you stay sustained through the game, and then you'll be able to eat after the game, which we'll talk about. So examples of this could be a lot of different things. It could be You can do like some oatmeal with a banana, maybe a drizzle of peanut butter and some honey on top of it. You can do a turkey sandwich, like a big turkey sub. Um, just keep the fats somewhat low. So like mayo is super high fat. I'd probably not put a ton of mayo on my sandwich right before a game. Fats are awesome most of the days, like most of the time, like we've talked about. But if it's game day and you're like 3 to 4 hours, 3 to 4 hours out before your game, fats take a long time to digest. And so if you've ever felt sick sluggish, or ever— if you ever felt like there's just kind of like a, a ball sitting in your stomach when you're playing, that's most likely because you had some fats beforehand and it wasn't able to digest beforehand. The carbs will digest, the protein will digest. The fats take a little bit longer, so keep it lower fat just on game day. Like I said, with the turkey sandwich, add pretzels, add apple, add, add something else to make sure that you're hitting those carbs and that you're hitting the amount that your body needs. Some of this will be trial and error. It's that that's totally fine. Please, please, please, the biggest mistake that you could ever do is avoid this meal or skip it. If you skip it, I promise you, you will tank out. If you only eat lunch around 12, you have a game around 6, and you don't eat in between there, or if you only have a small snack, I promise you, your body will not be sustained through the game. And if you're like thinking right now, no, I, I play fine, well, awesome. If you're already playing fine on a quarter tank, then imagine what you're going to be doing on a full tank of gas. You know what I'm saying? So, um, we have the 4 hours out, the full power plate, performance power plate. Okay, 2 hours before— and you don't have to get super, um, with the, the 4 hours out, you don't have to get like super anal about it. If it's 3 to 4 hours out, that's great. Okay, so 2 hours before, we're going to be having a high carbohydrate snack. I call it like the pregame boost. This— examples of this, so we want about 50 to 60 grams of carbs here. And examples of this, like, this is just going to top off your energy stores. You're gonna like, just as if you filled the gas tank up, you 100 miles down the road and you're like, I just need to top off. I might— it's going to be a little bit— it's going to be a little while before I hit the next gas station. Same thing goes for you, okay? So we're going to top off your energy stores. Examples of this could be like a granola bar plus a couple like GoGo Squeeze applesauce packets. Could be some fruit leather with banana and crackers. You could also do a Clif Bar with an apple. You just want to shoot for 50 to 60 grams of carbs, lower protein, and lower fat sources. Mistakes again that people would make here is eating like a super high-fat bar. For instance, um, nuts. Nuts are super high-fat, awesome most days, but if you're having like a big peanut butter bar or maybe a whole thing of trail mix right before, it might be a little hard for your body to digest. That being said, if you're a runner and you're kind of a distance, distance goer and fats feel good and you're, you feel like you're super fueled by that, great. If you know your body, then, then keep doing what you're doing. But most people, high-intensity athletes, you don't need a ton of fats before a game. So 4 hours out, Power Plate meal. 2 hours out, high carb snack. And now we're 1 hour out. This is just going to be all about hydration at this point. If you need a little bit more carbohydrates, I'll tell you how to get that as well. So you want to go— it depends on your body and your size, but probably between 2 to 3 cups of water is what you're shooting for. Um, I always say even less than that, maybe like 12 to 20 ounces is kind of what you're shooting for. If you're bigger and if you feel like you sweat more, go upwards of 20 ounces beforehand. If you're smaller, you don't sweat as much, maybe about 12 to 16 ounces would be great for you. The key here is to sip, um, and to slowly, slowly drink instead of just chug right before a game, and then you feel gross and, and your stomach hurts. And that's not what we want when you're running and when you're playing a game. So you want to be hydrated, and there's two parts to hydration. Everyone always just thinks water, but we also need to think about electrolytes. I'm not going to go super deep into electrolytes today because we did a whole podcast on that beforehand. We— because we've already filmed and posted a whole podcast on that. You can do a deep dive into hydration. You can go and watch it. It's already posted on our YouTube page and on our podcast pages, Apple Music, Spotify, etc. So go find that if you're really curious about hydration and really dialing in what you need to be doing there. But when it comes to electrolytes, the thing— the one that I'm most concerned about for my athletes, especially if you're a sweater— um, I was, I was a big sweater.. And, um, when I was playing sports, I still do sweat a lot, obviously, when I'm working out and stuff. But when I was playing basketball, when I was training in college and stuff, my coach would always say, Higgs, eat your salt, eat your salt, eat your salt, because salt is what we lose when we sweat, and that's what causes us to cramp. So in order to not cramp in games and in order to not feel super crappy and fatigued and lightheaded in games, you need your salt. And so when there's electrolytes and drinks, there's— they're— we're usually referring to sodium chloride, which combines to be salt, and then we're referring to potassium as well. Gatorade, Powerade, they have those. They do a decent job with potassium, but most of them don't have enough electrolytes in them, to be honest. So at this point, I'm not as concerned with the carbohydrates and the sugars coming from the sports drinks for you guys to be getting in, especially if you've done the 4 window and the 2 window. I'm more concerned about you guys getting that salt in. And so different ways that you can do that. A lot of my athletes just like to have like a handful of pretzels, 'cause it's a salty snack, and drink their 12 to 16 ounces with that. You can do a Gatorade, like a 16-ounce Gatorade, and then put like a sprinkle, an 1/8 of a teaspoon of salt in there with it. You can get like Liquid IV packets and just do one of those in a 16-ounce water bottle before a game. Those are all the good options. Typically— it depends on your size— but typically between 300 milligrams of sodium— and you can read that on a label— to 500 milligrams of sodium is what you're shooting for pregame so that you're ready to roll and you're less likely to cramp and stuff once you get in your competition, in your race, in your game, etc. So I know I've been referring to games a lot, but this will also go for swimmers, this will also go for runners, this will, this will go for a lot of different people that Wrestlers even use this. They have to tweak it a little bit because sometimes they only have about 2 hours after weigh-in. Um, but a lot of wrestlers have actually applied this as well. And I can kind of show you how to tweak it at the end of this podcast. If you have an early morning game or an early morning run, or you have to be ready for an early morning wrestling match, there's ways to tweak it to still get your fuel in. Um, if you don't quite have the 4 hours out and I'll show you guys how to do that, but a lot of people would be asking like, can I use this for swimming? Can I use this for running? Like, yes, you can use this for everything. Just listen to your body, like, and always practice this at practice before you do it in a game or a race. Okay, so practice what you're going to be eating, practice what you're going to be snacking on, practice your hydration, and see how you feel during a hard practice. And if you're killing it then, um, and if you feel really good and everything felt great, then go and apply it to your race or your game. So we've gone over 4 hours out is your performance power plate, 2 hours out is going to be a high-carb snack, 1 hour out you're going to just focus on electrolytes with fluids. It's okay if do a sports drink there and get extra carbohydrates. That's definitely not going to hurt you. But like I said, test it out before you ever do it in a game, and then, or, or race or a meet. And then during the game or during the meet, so we'll talk about during the game first, and then I'll kind of tell you how to apply it to like multiple event athletes, whether you're a swimmer or runner or wrestler. So during the game, for my team sport athletes, you You guys are going to be wanting about 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrates per hour. If you only have— if your game only lasts like 90 minutes, an hour and a half, 30 carbs between the whole game probably will be decent. The idea is to keep you topped off. We want to keep your energy stores up. We don't want you to tank out. If there's going to potentially be an overtime, we don't want you to, to get to run out of gas in overtime. Like, we want to just keep you topped off so you're ready for anything. And that fourth quarter U looks very similar as first quarter you. I had an athlete I've been working with, she's one of the best players in Kentucky, she's a basketball player, and she came to me and they were saying how she gets face guarded every game, obviously, and she's, she's a very elite athlete. But fourth quarter her, she was shorting shots, she was making silly fatigue mistakes, she was very fatigued, she was, she was just not able to finish the game strong, which was very frustrating because her kid didn't because her conditioning was on point. Now she's implemented this 4-2-1-0, and she fuels during the game. She has carbs, and I'll tell you some good carb ideas that you can have during the game. She has all of that, and she is crushing the fourth quarter now. Like, she still gets face guarded all game, she still plays super hard all game. I don't think she sits even a minute during the game besides halftime, and she's crushing the fourth quarter. So this makes a big difference, um, if you ever experience that wall or that fourth quarter of fatigue this will completely destroy it. Like, it'll do away with it, which is really exciting for you. So during the game, 30 to 60 carbs per hour. Okay, so if you're a football player and you have like a 2 to 3 hour game, you need about 30 to 60 carbs every single hour. So some ideas: sports drinks are a great option, just make sure you're not getting the zero sugar kind. Sugar equals carbs. Okay, and, and I know that a lot of people will say, well, sugar is bad, like I shouldn't be having sugar. During a game. I agree, like, don't have Gatorade for lunch, like, that's silly. But during a game, your body is just going to slurp that sugar up and use it directly for your energy output, for your cuts, for your sprints, for your jumps. Like, it'll directly use it. It's not going to just go and store it or anything. So that, if you're going to be having a sports drink, during the game is the best time to be having it. A lot of people like gummy bears. You can do half of a banana at halftime. And a lot of people think that, like, it's kind of taboo or weird to eat at halftime. It's weird because it's not normal. And what's not normal is for people to focus on nutrition. And then like, because most athletes— most, most athletes aren't elite, most athletes aren't going to be focusing on the boring or lame stuff. So if you really want to kind of separate yourself from the rest of them, you're probably not going to be normal, and you should be eating at halftime in order to really see those, those gains and the performance in the second half that you want to be seeing. Okay, what's even more— would be even more of a bummer— like, you can either have your teammates think you look weird eating some applesauce or whatever at halftime, or you can just play like crap in the second half. Choose your weird. Okay, choose your hard. Um, I would prefer to play great in the second half and have my teammates be like, why are you eating that? And then you'll see that next time around they'll probably bring some applesauce too. So you can do gummy bears, you can do applesauce, you can do bananas, you can do pretzels while you're obviously hydrating at half time as well. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches people like a lot. Um, just, just test it out, see what your body likes. Um, if you feel like you are more prone to sweating and cramping during games, this is during the game, is you also probably want some electrolytes as well. Gatorade will— because you fueled with good electrolytes before the game, Gatorade will probably keep you at bay during the game. If you sweat a lot, then you might want to look into having another electrolyte powder. Again, it's just some trial and error there. If you are a runner and you're like, or if you have tournaments and you're like, okay, so what do I do in between my runs? Or I'm swimming at one event at 10 AM and then the other one's not till 1 PM, what do I do? Here's a rule to follow. It's called the 1:1 rule. Okay, so you're gonna like, leading up to it, you're gonna do your 4-2-1-0 routine. Um, during the meet, during like, during the breaks between your events, you're, you're going to follow the 1:1 rule, which basically means for of every minute you have in between your race, you're going to have equal amount of carbs. And if you have like 4 hours in between the race, I'll talk to you about what to do with that instead, because I don't expect you eating 400 to 500 grams of carbs in one sitting or anything like that. But if you have 30 minutes in between the race, you probably want about 30 grams of carbs, quick carbs. This can be a sports drink, applesauce, anything like that's going to be great. If you have 60 minutes in between the race— the races, then you're going to have about 60 grams of carbs. A bagel with some honey on it is a perfect snack. If you have more than 90 minutes in between games, you could do about 60 to 90 carbs, but you're going to add about 10 to 15 grams of protein to allow for a little bit more of a meal, a little bit more of energy, allow your muscles to recover a little bit more. And then if you have like 2 hours, you're going to be having a mini meal where you can have like half of a sub sandwich or, um, really kind of focusing on more high carb but still kind of more of a meal-based instead of a snack-based. Hopefully that kind of gives you guys some guidance to go off of, but the 1:1 rule is huge. My motto is compete, eat, repeat. Compete, eat, repeat. If you are competing, if you're running your 800 meters and you have the 4 in like 30 minutes and you're not eating or consuming any carbohydrates in that period, you're doing yourself a disservice. I promise you that. You need to be eating in between. If you're not sure you can eat, then drinking a sports drink is a great option, or having an energy juice or an energy gel. Anything like that that just gives your body some refuel is going to be so good for your performance, I promise you. If in between your events you have like 4 hours, or sometimes there's like prelims in the morning for swimming and then finals in the evening, and they swim— you swim at 10 and then you're not going to swim till 5 again, you just do the 4-2-1-0 leading up to your event in the morning, and then once you finish, you're just going to repeat the 4-2-1-0 routine. Okay, so that's the easiest way that you can do it if you have 3 to 4 hours in between your races. If you don't, then just follow the 1:1 rule like we talked about. Okay, that was a lot to cover. Mainly carbohydrates. When you only have short amount of time, you just want to stick to carbs, okay? That's your body's fuel source. You want that. So we've done 4 hours out, we've done 2 hours out, we've done 1 hour out, and then we've done during the game or during the meets. Now we're going to go to 1 hour after. Within 1 hour after your game ending or after your meet ending, we want to get a full meal in you. We want another performance plate. We want this to be a recovery meal. You just worked your muscles so hard, you just like, you pushed your body. You need to recover. You need carbs to refill those energy tanks, and you need protein to be able to build your muscle back and allow your muscle to recover so you're not hit— getting any injuries. And you need some healthy fats to allow your body to have more sustained energy. And then the fruits and vegetables are going to give you guys amazing vitamins and minerals to allow your body to heal itself in other ways as well. Okay, so Performance Plate, you're wanting to get in right after. If you need to go out for that, that's completely fine. You just want the carbs, you want the protein, you want a healthy fat source, and then you want a fruit and vegetable. And if a lot of you are wondering like, okay, I'm not really sure what carbs and protein and fats are, in my Sports Nutrition 101 podcast I go over that a lot. And so maybe pop back there to listen to that to understand a little bit more about what is what and how to fuel with it. It. Okay, don't make the mistake of waiting too long. I know a lot of you aren't necessarily hungry after a game. It doesn't matter, just eat. Okay, your body will adjust. You'll learn— it'll learn to eat directly after your game. But if you wait too long, you're going to miss the window to really recover, help your muscles recover, and to really help your body replenish its glycogen storages, which will allow you to not be able to train as hard the following day or the following week. Okay, that was, that was a lot. Hopefully you guys are still with me here. So I get a lot— I'm kind of gonna go over some FAQs, some frequently asked questions about this plan, um, and ways to adjust it. So frequently asked questions are: how do I adjust if I have an early morning game or an early morning run? Am I supposed to be getting up at 3 AM? The answer is absolutely not. Like, never sacrifice your sleep. Your sleep is so important. I'll do a podcast on sleep soon. Sleep is is so important for your body. Um, there's the human growth hormone is let out when you're sleeping. It allows your body to recover, it allows it to recharge. It's like plugging your phone in at night. You need to plug your body in at night, and you need to leave it plugged in for at least 7 to 8 hours. Well, minimum 7 hours, but at least 8 to 9 hours ideally. So if you have an early morning game, you can't wake up on time, um, or you're not going to wake up for 4 AM for an 8 AM game, totally fine. Most of you are going to be up about 2 hours before, so immediately upon waking you want to get carbohydrates in your body and moderate protein. So you can shoot for— if you can shoot for about 60 to 80 grams of carbs and 10 to 15 grams of protein here. And so if it's 2 hours out, you're usually going to be the— to be doing the 4-2-1-0 routine. But if you only have 2 hours, then you're just going to con— like chop the 4 hours out meal in half and put that in the 2 hours. So what I mean here is if you're usually having like a 2 cups of oatmeal with, you know, a drizzle of peanut butter and a banana and a full banana, then you could just maybe do 1 cup of oatmeal, half of a banana, and then like a little drizzle of peanut butter still. You know, you're just going to chop that meal in half if you don't have the time. That way you're eating a little less than you would be eating, but your body's still getting the energy. It's been fasting for hours, you haven't eaten, since the night before. You need, you need, need, need the calories. You need the energy in order to perform well that day. Okay, so even if you don't feel hungry, just chop your normal breakfast in half and eat that. Some common mistakes here though are eating too high of fat again. So if, if you're eating like a ton of eggs for breakfast— eggs are pretty high in fat— if you're eating a ton of bacon or sausage for breakfast, and, and that's great other days, but on game days when you, you're having to perform in like 2 hours I wouldn't do it, okay? I would, I would stick to mainly carbs and some protein. Examples there are you could do bagel, you could do oatmeal, you can do a yogurt parfait, like a fat, like low-fat yogurt parfait with a ton of granola on it. There's options here, play around with it. Peanut butter and jelly, I've had a lot of people do. Just keep the peanut butter on the lighter side. Um, so you wake 2 hours before you have to play, eat immediately. Chop your 4-hour meal that you would normally be eating in half. Then you have 1 hour before the game, you're gonna chop your— what you'd normally be eating 2 hours out in half. So that high-carb snack, you're gonna just eat half of it. So if you have a Clif Bar, just eat half of the Clif Bar. If you're still hungry and you can't eat the whole thing and you feel like you can digest it, go for it. But the 1 hour out, you're going to have a high-carb snack right there, and then you're also going to be doing your hydration the same that we've taught you in the past. You're going to be able to just get your sodium in and your fluids in. And then during the game, because you weren't able to eat the 4 hours out and the 2 hours out, and you don't have as much food in your body as you normally would during a game if you were eating— if you were playing in the afternoon, you want to really make sure that you're, you're drinking carbs during the game or eating carbs during the game. So again, applesauce, pretzels, bananas, sports drinks, any of those things are going to give you great sources of carbs. If this is a tournament day, you are— and you're playing several games throughout the day, follow the same 1-to-1 rule that I was telling my swimmers and my runners to follow. If you have 30 minutes, if you end your game at 10:30 and you have— you play at 11 AM, You got 30 minutes, you need about 30 grams of carbs, 1 banana, that's perfect. What you don't want to make the mistake of is not eating, because then your gas tank is going to continue to deplete, and then you're going to bonk out, and then the 4th game of the tournament you just play like crap. And guess what? That's the game that the college scout decides to show up to, and that sucks, right? Like, you just want to keep your energy up all game long. And then again, after the game, you want to just make sure— after like the tournament, or after you're done done, you want to be eating the great post-game recovery performance plate meal. We covered a lot today. I know you probably feel like you were being shot at, uh, shot out with information through a fire hose. Um, just, just choose one thing to implement today. Um, choose the 4-hour out meal, or choose to have— choose to have the 2-hour out snack. Um, just choose one thing, and then next week choose the next thing, and then the next week choose the next thing, until all of a sudden you have this perfect game day routine that you're crushing it with with and that you're performing so well with that you're never going to go back to what you were doing before. Thank you so much for being here today. Please, if you guys have questions, if you have topics you want me to cover, I would love to do that. I love to spread this information. Just please know that food is your friend and food is fuel. Your body needs it and your body will adjust to it. I know that you sometimes won't feel hungry in the mornings, you won't feel hungry before games or during games, But your body needs the fuel. You're still driving your car, you're still running out of gas, you need to stop and you need to refuel or else you're gonna run out, you're gonna bonk out, you're not gonna perform well. And you need to cash in, you need to cash in the full 40 hours for what you're doing instead of only getting the 10-hour paycheck. You guys are working too hard to be leaving that on the table. Thanks so much for being here, loved being here with you guys. See you guys next time.