Coaching and Care of Athletes

CARE AND CONDITIONING petition or training. The time at which training or a competition is to take place must have a definite effect upon the schedule for meal-times. Let us deal first with training in relation to food in the broad sense of the periodic schedule. In the first place, it is an accepted fact that it is unwise for athletes to take any form of strenuous exercise for a period of two to three hours after eating a meal. There is a definite relationship between the time of eating and of taking exercise. When the digestive process is fully active large demands are made by the stomach and intestines upon the heart and the whole of the circulatory system. Similar demands are made upon the circulation when the skeletal muscles are doing hard work. In these circumstances it must be obvious that when the digestion and the muscles are both active at the same time a conflict is set up which must tend to deprive both the muscles and the digestive tract of their proper amount of blood-supply. In the foregoing circumstances the coach, in planning his diet sheet and scheduling the time of meals, must so arrange matters that training will not begin until digestion is more or less finished. There is one further point in planning the menus throughout training. The menu for non-competition days, and also for rest– days, during training gives scope for offering the athlete a greater choice of dishes and a variation in the amount of food he is going to take. One must, however, always observe the common– sense rules for balancing the diet. On rest-days, of course, as at all other times, overeating should be most strongly discouraged. Now we come to the all-important question of feeding the athlete in final preparation for his competition. It is my very definite opinion that the athlete does his work in competition firstly on the cumulative effect of his training, which includes, of course, his dietary. As a sub-head to this, one may mention the amount of reserve energy he will store up in his liver by taking a course of glucose, instead of ordinary sugar, throughout his training. This is supplemented by an increase in the glucose he is given in the last week of training, and is again supplemented by a further increase of glucose on the day of the competition and a final supply twenty minutes before that competition takes place. As to the immediate pre-competition period, however, it may be said that the work the athlete does in competition is finally built up on what he eats on the day preceding the contest. If, therefore, an athlete is competing on a Saturday the coach should pay particular attention to his meals on the Friday, because it II9