1. Aches and pains after a match or practice

The most efficient way too prevent most discomfort after a match or practice is to prepare your body prior to leaving for the field.

We should accept nothing less than proper preparation for our sessions from our young athletes. These kids are athletes, and they must understand this point.

The body needs to be properly hydrated and fed at least 1 hour prior to work. The one hour time immediately prior to training should become holy to your body, allowing only fluids such as water or Gatorade or another recovery fluid into your system.

Proper amounts of clean proteins and complex carbohydrates should be ingested no more than 3 hours prior and not incurring into the holy hour before practice. This allows the body to digest and absorb the proper amounts of nutrients into your system for optimal performance.

Light stretching should begin at home, before you get into the car to drive to the field. This is especially helpful if you have a long distance to drive. On those longer trips stopping along the journey at an approved rest area to stretch lightly will greatly help your warm up session at the field. An important reminder, muscles are elastic. They must be slowly warmed up and carefully stretched. Stretching a cold muscle is like pulling on a rubber band with too much force. You can damage the tissue.

After practice water and a re-hydration fluids are essential. You system is not ready to accept nutrients for optimal processing immediately after intense exercise. The best way to recover is to hydrate; stretch and shower, then have an athletically acceptable balanced meal. Clean proteins from lean sources such as salmon, turkey, sirloin, complex carbohydrates from whole grains and vegetable sources high on fiber are excellent for recovery. My kids always like a milkshake prior to bed, Sleep is when the body recovers, protein synthesis occurs and we build back our reserves for the next day.

Proper rest is essential especially when multiple games are played over a weekend. Swimming is acceptable to cool down as long as it is non strenuous, and the chlorine is completely washed off the body. Unwashed chlorine will clog skin pores leading to muscle fatigue and improper body cooling.

To rid the body of excessive amounts of lactic acid build up is extremely important to recovery and injury prevention. Imagine your muscles not being allowed to contract and extend freely during activity. That is in a nutshell what lactic acid build up can cause. So we must stretch after exercise to begin to break this substance up, have proper nutrients in our system to carry this break down of lactic acid residue out of our system. Fiber is great for this, and I firmly believe one must supplement fiber as an athlete to get the proper amount of fiber into the system for the added demands we as athletes subject our bodies to.

Vitamin C is also very helpful in the recovery process and boosts our immune system. I can not emphasize this enough.
If you perform intense exercise you will need additional amounts of these and all nutrients in your system, your usage of these nutrients will be higher than the non active or moderately active person.

I am more than willing to help you find your correct nutritional balance or refer you for more information.

Coach Skanron
Fitness Trainer
bskanron@wi.rr.com