Nutrition After Rowing
Nutrition is an important and effective tool to aid recovery if it's correctly applied. It's especially important if you're training or competing twice in a day. You need to help your body recovery from the physiological stress it's just been subject to. Good nutrition will help minimize recovery time and help your body adapt becoming fitter and stronger.
Aims of Recovery Nutrition...
Replace Fuels
The harder and longer time you've exercised for the more the glycogen (fuel for energy) in your muscles and liver will have been depleted and the longer it will take to recover. If carbohydrate is eaten post training muscles can restore glycogen levels at 5% per hour.
Rehydrate
After training most rowers will be dehydrated, especially in hot conditions or after strenuous effort. In these cases it is especially important to rehydrate and the best type of solution to consume is an isotonic drink. See Hydration page for more information.
Immune System
Intense training can suspress your immune system, this may make you suspectible to infections. Its important that you take on adequate nutrients to help your body defend off these viruses. Recommended nutrients include vitamin C and E. See the Micronutients page for more information
Muscle Repair
High intensity training (TR & AN) and racing sprints can cause muscle fibre damage, this can delay muscle glycogen storage.
When should I eat?
The best time to start refuelling is as soon as possible after exercise. This is because the muscles store glycogen faster in this 'post exercise window' than at other times. This is important especially if you're training twice a day.
What should I eat?
Recommendations are to consume about 1g carobhydrate/kg of body weight, so a 70kg rower would need to consume 70g of carbohydrate within 2 hours of finishing training. Also combining protein with carbohydrate can aid recovery more than carbohydrate alone. This can be particularly effective after high resistence training where muscle damage is highly likely to occur. The protein helps repair muscle damage, whilst carbohydrate restores glycogen stores.
View the FAQs page to see a question answered on recover nutrition
Table 12. Post training meals and snacks
Carbohydrate Snacks |
Protein and Carbohydrate Snacks (50g of CHO + protein) |
500ml Fruit juice |
250 - 300ml milkshake or fruit smoothie |
60 -70g jelly beans / jelly babies |
1 Large bowl of cereal with milk |
2 slices of toast with jam or honey |
220g baked beans with 2 slices of toast |
2 cereal bars |
1 bread roll with cheese/meat filling with a banana |
300g rice pudding |
300g bowl of fruit salad with 200gfruit yoghurt |
300g jacket potato |
200g pizza with chicken and vegetables |
1 cup of vegetable soup and large bread roll |
300g baked potato with cottage cheese + glass of milk |
To follow recipes for some of these and other meals visit our Recipe page.