I almost never read Sports Illustrated. My boyfriend always does, and this past weekend he handed the magazine to me, opened to a specific article and said “You need to read this.” And he was right – it was a great article titled “The New Training Table.” The article gives readers a peek into the new “food consciousness” that is revolutionizing both pro and big-time college sports.
The article starts by detailing the opening of Stanford’s Arrillaga Family Dining Commons – where they serve up dishes designed to increase athletic and brain performance. The dishes are separated into various categories such as “anti-inflammatory” – something you might eat after a tough workout to help your muscles recover – and “enhanced immunity” – something you might eat after being stuck in the middle seat on an airplane next to someone sneezing their way through a cross-country flight. Any student can eat at the new dining hall, but it was designed with athletes in mind. The impetus for it came from Stanford’s Director of Sports Performance Brandon Marcello, who believes (correctly) that nutrition is one of the last frontiers to conquer in terms of maximizing sports performance.
The article is really a study of many of the nutrition strategies that are being used by pro-sports teams and individual athletes. Many athletes, even major stars like the NBA’s Steve Nash and the NFL’s Dwight Freeney, are completely rethinking the way they approach nutrition.
Athletes suffer from the same troubles as the rest of Americans when it comes to their diets. Many of them reach for what is fast and easy and they eat way too much processed food. Unfortunately, judging by their endorsements, they also help foist lousy stuff on the rest of us… Coke, Pepsi, Gatorade, Cheetos, Skittles, Oreos, and the list goes on. Even world-class athletes get tired, bloated and suffer from digestive issues. They have headaches and body aches, but they simply cannot afford them. Their livelihoods depend on peak performance. Accountants and attorneys, generally speaking, can do their jobs just fine even with some aches and pains that are exacerbated by a lousy diet. Not so for third basemen or midfielders or defensive backs.
Some athletes and teams are figuring this out. They have personal nutritionists, chefs and tailored meal plans. They are cutting out empty carbs and processed sugars (remember the Real Skinny motto – “Sugar is the Devil”) and instead emphasizing lean meats and fresh fruits and vegetables.
That can work for all of us – not just the elite athlete. Most of us do not get paid to take care of our bodies, we don’t have personal chefs and very few of us can afford a personal trainer. (Even if we had all of that, no one would ever pay to have someone following us around to make sure we avoid McDonald’s like the N.Y. Giants did for defensive end Leonard Marshall back in 1988.) But the average Joe and Jane reading this blog can still improve our diet and our health, just like the athletes we admire.
I think the athletes we ought to emulate are the guys that are pushing 40 and are still bringing it each night. Obviously, they cannot turn back time with a good diet alone – they might not be play quite as long or quite as well as they used to. But they are not sidelined with inflammation and plagued by minor preventable injuries like some of their younger counterparts either, and in many cases they are still all-stars. Two of them, Steve Nash and Grant Hill of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, were highlighted in the SI article. These guys are not eating Pop Tarts for breakfast and pizza and wings for dinner. They are going gluten-free, cage-free and wild caught. They are loading their plates with mostly meat, fish, vegetables and fruit. They avoid sugar and they stay away from processed foods as a rule. And they eat fat – not the saturated kind found in fast food and snack food – but the kind found in nuts, seeds, oils and grass-fed beef.
Professional sports went through a long period where elite athletes were using chemical enhancements to allow them to maintain peak performance well into their late 30s and early 40s. Think of Roger Clemens’ “roid rage” and Barry Bonds’ oversized head. Well thanks to more sophisticated and more frequent testing, those days are gone. If top athletes want to maintain elite-level performance as they age, they need to take better care of their bodies. That means better nutrition.
I think we should look to some of these athletes for inspiration. Not only for their long passes, lightening fast speed or crazy dunks, but for what is on their plates. We may not be able to hit a 90 mile an hour fastball, but we can still treat our bodies as though we were world-class athletes. Our rewards will not be wealth and fame, but something even more important – long and healthy lives.
Click here to read portions of the article at sportsillustrated.com (subscription is required for the main article).
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