What should I feed my child before sport?

As parents, one of our jobs is helping our young people have the best possible chance for success. This can cover anything from logistical support, driving to and from training sessions, making sure they have all the equipment they need for their sport, emotional support after a sporting disappointment or sharing in their joy from their successes.

One aspect of support is ensuring they are well-fuelled before taking on a competition, a training session or a match. As they get older, also making sure they are well educated in this area too.

Being adequately hydrated is probably the most important thing that will affect performance, but in this short article I’m going to offer a few suggestions for snacks and small meals that are great for all-day competitions or before a training session.

Being a parent myself, I know only too well that it can be tricky to plan perfectly when exactly a meal can be prepared for, especially if you have more than one child and different after school or weekend timings. Because of this, I’ve tried to highlight a few time periods and food options depending on how far away from sport the mealtime or snack will be.

What does your child need for exercise?

Adequate Hydration

We know that the number of 2 litres a day comes to mind with regards to hydration, the same way ‘5 a day’ applies to fruit and veg portions, but both although being a good guide, are a little misleading.

Young people need anywhere between 1.5-3 litres of water a day, sometimes more if they are particularly active.

For exercise, having a glass of water 30-45 minutes before exercise, and having regular sips during exercise will be the best preparation for sport. I don’t think I need to highlight the issue with downing a pint of water 60 seconds before getting on court!

Accessible Energy

This is where timing comes in and where we consider what would be best to eat closer or further away from the event.

‘5 a day’ - having 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day should be a minimum, and as we are learning more and more about the gut microbiome, we are understanding that it is much more important to have a variety of different plant-based foods a week (up to 30 different sources) to keep us healthy.

In fact, there’s a good article from BBC Good Food on how 7 portions is a better guide per day.

2-3 hours before…

A well balanced meal that is high in carbohydrates, includes some protein and lower in fats. Carbohydrates are going to be the body’s preferred energy source during exercise, protein will help keep hunger at bay until the recovery meal, and fat will take a while to break down and utilise before sport so we want to keep that lower before exercise.

Example meals:

Chicken pasta with vegetables
Salmon salad with potatoes
Scrambled eggs with wholemeal toast
Porridge with nut butter, fresh fruit & seeds
A breakfast or bulky smoothie (oats, fruit, milk, nut butter)
Sweet potato & any choice of protein (chicken, fish, veggie alternative)

30-60 mins before….

As we get closer to the event, it’s about topping up our glycogen stores before exercise, so we’re looking at fast releasing easily-digestible carbohydrate snacks.

Example snacks:

A banana, an apple or fresh fruit
A fruit smoothie
Dried fruit (raisins, cherries, apple)
Simple granola bar
Homemade trail mix
Peanut butter sandwich
Jam sandwich

A quick guide to calories & snack choice

To conclude this guide to pre-competition nutrition, I’d like to briefly mention the number of calories in snacks available today. I have highlighted a few below, along with pictures of their products to show what we don’t really want to be feeding our kids before or during sport for optimal performance.

For snacks, you want to keep them under 150 calories, to ensure they’re ready to move as fast as possible when required. You also want to keep them as minimally processed as possible too, so taking a look at the ingredients is always a good idea. You can see from the list below which are perhaps good choices. Questions to ask:

Is it minimally processed?
Is it high fibre?
Is it not too high sugar?
Is it not too high fat?

If you have any questions about this article and how to best support your young person in sport then feel free to send me an email at: stephenthompsoncoaching@gmail.com and I’d be happy to help.