Nutrition Info for Competitive Soccer Players

In Sports, Winning Takes Smart Nutrition

Spring is a time when many athletes commit to eating better to be able to perform better. This information on nutrition for soccer players may help you reach your goals!

Soccer is a Game. Control what you can control. You can impact your nutrition

Many factors give you/your team the winning edge. Some factors are out of your control, such as heat, humidity, wind, altitude, water conditions, as well as the time of the game, amount of time between events, and perhaps travel fatigue. But nutritional factors are in your control, including what, when, and how much you eat. Simply put, to compete at your best, you need to know how to eat well enough to fight fatigue and be strong to the finish.

To address how to eat to perform at your best, I looked to the highly respected sports nutritionist Louise Burke PhD. researcher at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne. Here are some key points from her journal article on Nutritional approaches to counter performance constraints in high-level sports competition.

This information might inspire you to consult with a registered dietitian/ board-certified specialist in sports dietetics (RD CSSD) who can help you optimize your sports diet.  

Smart Food Choices for Athletes: Eating 

• Blood glucose gets supplied from your liver as well as from the banana, toast or other form of sugar or starch (carb) you eat before and/or during exercise. Some soccer players avoid pre- and during-exercise fuel, fearing it will create intestinal distress.
  • The better path is to train your gut to tolerate foods and fluids.
    • During training sessions, experiment with a variety of carbs (dried pineapple, granola bar, diluted juice) and/or a variety of flavors and brands of commercial products (sports drinks, gels, chomps, etc.), so you can learn what settle best.
    • Choosing a variety of carbohydrates can increase the rate they are absorbed and might reduce the risk of GI distress. Having a well-tested fueling plan is helpful.
• Training enhances your ability to burn fat. Given fat stores are essentially limitless, a fat-adapted soccer player (theoretically) should be able to perform very well without having to eat much.  That means, the need to eat less could reduce intestinal upset.
• Carbohydrate is a fundamental source of energy for both your muscles and your brain.
  • Carbohydrate in the blood, known as blood glucose, fuels the brain so it can focus on—and respond quickly to—the task at hand.
    • To optimize soccer performance, you want to maintain adequate blood glucose levels during exercise. 

• Research shows that fat-adapted athletes (on a high fat, very low carb keto diet) can maintain their baseline performance, but during real-life high intensity competitive endurance events, abundant evidence indicates their performance declines. That’s in part because burning fat, as compared to burning carb, requires more oxygen. When keto athletes attempt, let’s say, a high intensity fight to the finish, the lack of adequate oxygen leads to reduced power.
• Creatine supplements may help elite players do repeated sprints. Supplementing with creatine monohydrate has been shown to increase muscle creatine stores by about 20%. This can be particularly helpful for vegetarians, given dietary creatine is found primarily in meat/animal products.

Nutrition’s Impact on Brain Function

As a soccer athlete, you need a well-fed brain to help you concentrate, focus, and make wise decisions. A well-fed brain can also help keep you motivated to run at a hard pace.

To feed your brain, you want to embark upon exercise being well fed, with blood sugar in a normal range, and not be fasted (blood glucose drops overnight) and running on empty. 

• Caffeine is known to reduce the brain’s perception of pain, effort, and fatigue (even in athletes who regularly consume coffee). The recommended dose is 1.5-3 mg per pound of body weight (3-6 mg/kg) but one size does not fit all. Experiment to find the dose that’s best for your body!
• Soccer players can consume caffeine via gels, caffeinated energy bars, pre-workout supplements, caffeine pills, and coffee. The problem with coffee is the variability of the caffeine content, which makes it hard to identify a specific dose. 
• Some energy enhancers do not need to be absorbed into the body to offer beneficial effects. For example, simply rinsing the mouth with a sugar solution/sports drink (and spitting it out) stimulates reward centers in the brain, allowing you to play harder.
• Rinsing the mouth every 5 to 10 minutes with a menthol-containing solution creates a perceived cooling effect that can help to increase power or speed during prolonged exercise in the heat. But be careful. If you feel cooler—but actually are not cooler, you might over-extend yourself and end up slowing down prematurely.
• Anti-cramping agents such as pickle juice or spicy tastes might be helpful for players who experience muscle cramps. These pungent tastes are thought to “distract” the nerves involved with the cramping muscle and reduce the severity of the cramp. (More research is needed.)

Impact of Fluids on an Athlete’s Ability

You want to be sure you are optimally hydrated before you start playing soccer. Your first morning urine should be light-colored, not dark and concentrated.

• Whether programmed drinking (according to a plan) is better than drinking as desired according to your thirst depends on your sport. For example, during an all-day tournament, you can develop a large mismatch between sweat losses and fluid intake as compared to a one-hour training session. 
• The suggested goal is to lose <2% of your body weight during exercise (3 lbs. for a 150-lb player). In lab-based research, a loss of >3% of body weight (4.5 lbs.) is linked to reduced performance. In real life, many athletes’ motivation to win over-rides the negative effects of being under-hydrated.
  • Questions remain unanswered: Could underhydrated soccer players have performed better If they were better hydrated?
  • Or, does being lighter due to dehydration offer an advantage?
    • Stay tuned. Sports nutrition is an evolving science!

Nancy Clark’s best selling Sports Nutrition Guidebook is available on Amazon. Readers “get real-world advice from an internationally respected and trusted sports nutritionist.”

Nancy Clark, MS, RD counsels both casual and competitive athletes in the Boston-area (Newton; 617-795-1875). Her best-selling Sports Nutrition Guidebook is a popular resource, as is her online workshop. Visit NancyClarkRD.com for more information.