Happy Wednesday, everyone! Hope everyone is hanging in there. I’ve met with a few athletes lately who have taken training into their own hands during this time of canceled practices and sporting events and have begun regular daily practices and resistance training sessions, which I think is great! Anything to keep up your skill, agility, strength and endurance. I’ve loved talking with my athletes and families about how they are keeping up when regular practices are canceled and I have found that I’m still getting similar nutrition questions as I was before COVID-19 and social distancing arrived. One question I’m continuing to receive from athletes and families is about the ideal recovery snack. To help answer these questions I thought I would simply share a previous post on the subject but, after going back through my blog posts, I realized I have not written one about this particular topic yet! So, that is what today’s post is about - recovery fuel for the young athlete. The intention of this post is to share what to know to create your own recovery snacks and some examples of good recovery snacks that meet the criteria. Hope you find this helpful. Comment below or feel free to contact me with any questions!

Happy Fueling!

Taylor

The 3 Components of a Great Recovery Snack

A recovery snack should contain the following 3 components:

1. Carbohydrate - to replenish depleted glycogen (energy/carbohydrate) stores

2. Protein - to repair and rebuild muscle

3. Fluid - to rehydrate the body

If you only give the body carbohydrate, it leaves it without sufficient protein to maintain or build lean muscle. However, if you only consume protein, your body doesn’t have the carbohydrate it needs to continue creating energy! The body is then left having to use protein as a source of energy instead of using it to build and repair lean muscle and other tissues. Without fluid the body may stay in a dehydrated state, leaving it unable to fully recover and setting the athlete up for a suboptimal next workout (especially if that workout is the same day).

As you can see, it’s very important to include all 3 of these items into the recovery snack or meal. While you need only 3 things, it’s important to realize that there are many foods to choose from in each category so the athlete can mix and match to figure out what works best for him or her and to prevent food burnout. If you are not sure what qualifies as carbohydrate, protein and fluid, keep reading for some examples to take with you!

Examples of Recovery Snacks for the Child & Teen Athlete

Below is an infographic I put together showing you how to think about piecing the recovery snack or meal together using the 3 key components. You can see that there are all different foods and varieties you can create and choose from. Make sure to play around with different foods and find what works for you!

Foods That Pack a Punch

There are some foods that actually can count as 2 or 3 components in one or can be in different categories depending on what snack you are creating. This can be really helpful for the athlete that doesn’t have a lot of time to prep snacks or a lot of time to eat them. This usually applies to the teen athlete during the school year.

These foods include:

1. Chocolate Milk: protein, carbohydrate & fluid all in one bottle!

2. 100% Fruit Juice: carbohydrate & fluid

3. White milk: this include carbs, protein and fluid, but it does not contain as many carbs as chocolate milk so try to get another quality carbohydrate food with it

4. Yogurts: protein + some carbohydrate. The athlete in very long or intense practices would most likely benefit from including another form of carbohydrate with his / her yogurt