Swimming Nutrition Advice & Tips

Swimming Nutrition Advice & Tips
After hours of hard training sessions you are well prepared and determined for your next gala. You’re feeling great and are in tip top form. You’ve obviously been doing a lot of things right. However, the gala has a different set of challenges, you will face days or even weeks of competition, often away from home. Hours will be spent on a hot humid pool-side, and you will need to cope with the physical and mental stresses of swimming heats and hopefully finals!

There are 3 main factors to consider when planning your nutritional strategy for competition:

1. Energy Provision
All Olympic disciplines of swimming are heavily dependent upon the carbohydrate energy system. If you are to swim at your best you will need to ensure that your nutrition contains adequate amounts of carbohydrate energy to fully replace your muscle glycogen stores. Carbohydrate is stored in the body as muscle glycogen.

2. Hydration
It is well documented that as little as 2% loss in body weight due to dehydration will cause performance to fall by 10%. Dehydration can be a major factor in swimming because of the nature of the environment.

3. Maintaining a familiar nutrition programme.
It’s best to check what food will be available at the race venue and your accommodation before you get there rather than find out they have nothing you like when you arrive. Better still make sure you have taken enough food yourself so you know what you will be eating. Sports nutrition bars can be especially useful to provide a nutritious high energy snack that is easily carried in your kit bag.

There is no doubt that the swimmers who look after their fluid and energy needs will be at a major advantage over those who take less care about what and how much they drink. Pool sides tend to be very hot and humid at the best of times, by the time you’ve packed in all the competitors and spectators the temperatures soar, and sweat rates are likely to be far above normal. An electrolyte fluid replacement drink is ideal. Have a drinks bottle with you at all times. You’ll be doing yourself a favour even its just water.

CAUTION : Be careful about drinking too much tea, coffee, cola’s, or other drinks with caffeine in as this has a diuretic effect and can make matters worse. Keep your carbohydrate energy levels high. Maintaining optimum glycogen levels is the key to maintaining optimum performance.
Most swimmers could complete a training session without supplementing their carbohydrate energy stores with an energy drink, but how is this likely to affect performance on the long as well as the short term?

Once you are running low on carbohydrate energy the body has to rely increasingly upon its fat stores to supply the fuel for exercise. Fat is a very good store of energy, but when it comes to using it, fat has a much higher oxygen cost than carbohydrate. This means that the body will have to work much harder to supply more oxygen to the working muscles in order to go at the same speed, so you will not be able to swim as fast as when carbohydrate is available.

This is really important when you consider that the longest Olympic swimming event takes less than 15 minutes. It is easy to see the consequences in competition, less especially for long distance open water swims, this energy system will have little to do with your success in the Olympic swimming distances. Since it is the carbohydrate energy systems which are most important for success in these events, then it makes sense to use and improve these energy systems during training. Your training sessions will not only be less mentally taxing but more productive as well! Obvious when you think about its effect on training. Training whilst glycogen depleted will not only be hard work and mentally taxing, but could result in training the wrong energy system for competition. Long training sessions whilst running low on carbohydrate energy will have to be at a lower intensity and will train the fat burning energy system.

Whilst there are benefits of having a good fat burning energy system, especially for long distance open water swims, this energy system will have little to do with your success in the Olympic swimming distances.

Since it is the carbohydrate energy systems which are most important for success in these events, then it makes sense to use and improve these energy systems during training. Your training sessions will not only be less mentally taxing but more productive as well!