Soccer players need about 50 grams of carbs two hours before practice or games to avoid hitting the wall. Pair a banana with a granola bar, applesauce with a muffin, or grapes with pretzels to keep your glycogen stores full and your energy steady.
Soccer athletes, these snacks are going to be perfect to eat 2 hours before your games or your practices. Your muscles have teeny little energy tanks in them the same way that a car has a gas tank. A car cannot go without gas in it. Your muscles, or you, can't go without gas in it. The gas that fills up your muscle energy tanks is carbohydrates, and a lot of them. You know your tank is empty when you feel super fatigued, you're hitting the fourth quarter wall, you feel like you can't make it through practices all the time, you feel like your conditioning sucks even though it doesn't. That's when you literally just don't have enough gas in the tank to make your body go. So all of these snacks are going to fill up those energy tanks. Starting about 2 hours before your practice, I want you to choose 2 of these options to help you fuel your body. Could be banana with a granola bar, could be an applesauce with a muffin. It can be some grapes with some pretzels, some dried mangoes with some dates. You can mix and match all these. We've got fruit leather, we've got crackers. You can do other fruit as well. You are looking for about 50 grams of carbohydrates pre-practice in order to keep yourself from hitting that wall. This is when you're feeling super tired and sluggish. You might feel like that your legs are trudging through concrete and that you can't go or play to your full potential, even when you're working your butt off. You simply do not have enough fuel in your body, my friends.
