Kelsey HigginsonSports Nutrition Coach and Founder at Clutch Day Coaching

Rest Day nutrition vs Training Day nutrition

21 Jul 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:48

In this solo YouTube segment, Kelsey Higginson argues that athletes should eat the same amount and type of food on both training and rest days. She contends that adding complexity—different calorie targets for different days—makes dietary plans hard to follow and reduces adherence. To simplify, her coaching approach calculates an athlete’s total weekly caloric needs based on their specific goals (speed, strength, or mass gain), then divides that total by seven so the same calorie target is applied every day. She emphasizes that a rest day is essentially a recovery day, and consistent nutrition supports optimal recovery and prepares the athlete for the next training or competition session.

Chapters

Should there be a difference between rest day nutrition and training day nutrition? My opinion is no. Your training day nutrition should be the same as your rest day nutrition because it's going to keep things simple. The more complexity that you add into your schedule— so this day you're eating this much, and this day you have to eat this, and that day you have to eat that— it's just going to end up resulting in you not following the plan because it's so freaking hard to follow. So my personal belief is let's make the plan as effective and as simple as possible that will still get you the results. So in my coaching groups, what we do is we take an average of the total calories an athlete would need for the entire week based on their goals, whether whether they're trying to get faster or stronger or gain weight. We take the total, we divide it by 7, and those are the calories they're eating every single day. So a training day is the same as a rest day because that rest day is really a recovery day, and food is a major part of recovery that's going to set them up for the following training or game day after that.