Nutrition Tips for Competitive Rowers

Video Transcript

" Hi! I'm Anna Marie and I am a Canadian Olympic rower and I am here on behalf of expertvillage.com. I am going to talk to you a little bit about nutrition when it comes to rowing., Nutrition for everybody in rowing is going to be slightly different. It really depends on what works for you. If you are going into the lightweight category, nutrition is going to be very very important. It is always super important that if you are training come down to a lightweight to make sure that you are doing it in a healthy way. So making sure that you monitoring how much weight you are loosing; no more than 2 lbs a week and making sure you are not trying not to cram for that regatta by loosing 7 lbs in that last week before regatta; just by dehydrating and not eating anything. It is very important to be very conscious of what you are eating; calories in and calories out and that goes for everybody; heavy weights and lightweights. Heavy weight men, with their greater muscle mass, are going to require a lot more calories when they are training. Light weight women, with smaller muscle mass, will require less calories. It is very important to know what works for you, what types of food works for you and what foods to avoid. In general, stay away from the junk foods, anything with a lot of sugar in it, a lot of refined sugar in it, things like that. It is basic healthy eating. Lots of fruits and vegetables, lots of whole grains and healthy grains like rice, whole wheat pastas, things like that. Make sure you are getting a bit of protein with every meal and every snack that you are having and also making sure that you are getting your calcium through milk or milk alternates. It is basic healthy eating. Just keep track of it, make sure you are getting enough but not too much. Good luck. "