TrueSport: May 2020

How athletes can make the most of a plant-based diet

Different diet trends gain popularity from year to year. In recent years, the move to plant-based sports nutrition has been on the rise as more elite and professional athletes have made the switch to vegan and vegetarian diets. Although a plant-based diet doesn’t necessarily mean your athlete will enhance their performance, it will enhance their health.

According to the Alternative Healthy Eating Index developed by Harvard University researchers, individuals who decide to move from an omnivorous to plant-based diet typically improve their overall nutrition because they consume more fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains that provide high levels of vitamins, minerals, and fiber, while also being very low in saturated fat and devoid of cholesterol.

If your adolescent athlete is looking to experiment with their nutrition to achieve a competitive edge, improve their overall health, or follow a more ethical, eco-friendly diet, here are ways they can make the most out of a plant-based diet.

Get educated on what their body needs to function at its best

According to the TrueSport Nutrition Guide, “athletes have increased energy needs, which allows for more opportunities to obtain the nutrients they need through a balanced diet composed of a variety of natural foods.”

Active young athletes on a plant-based diet must focus on what specific plant-based foods will get them the nutrients they need to sustain their energy in order to enhance their athletic performance, decrease fatigue throughout the day, and prevent injury.

Table 11, found in the TrueSport Nutrition Guide, lists sources of micronutrients that may be low in an athlete’s diet. The table includes a variety of plant-based foods that an athlete can incorporate into their diet to ensure that they’re getting the proper servings of nutrients they need.

Know their sources of key nutrients

Plant-based nutrition has been proven to boost health by preventing obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cancer, and heart disease. Do you know where your athlete can get the best nutrients to keep their body functioning and performing at its highest level on a plant-based diet?

The TrueSport Nutrition Guide suggests young athletes incorporate nutrients from:

Protein

• Cooked black beans
• Cooked lentils
• Cooked quinoa
• Cottage cheese
• Cheese
• Eggs
• Milk (nonfat or low-fat)
• Tofu and other soy products
• Yogurt (nonfat or low-fat)

Carbohydrates

• Fruits: raisins, bananas, berries, oranges, etc.
• Fruit juices
• Granola bars
• Oatmeal
• Baked white or sweet potato (plain)
• Bagel
• Whole wheat bread

Fats

• Nuts (mixed)
• Seeds
• Nut butters
• Olive oil
• Avocado

Combat convenience foods by meal planning

Whether it’s for a typical school day, an intense day of training, or a full day of competition, one of the most significant ways to help your athlete thrive on a plant-based diet is by encouraging them to develop the healthy habit of meal planning.

Set aside time with your athlete to plan a weekly menu for meals and snacks that they can take with them for the day, which will help them avoid the temptation to eat convenience foods that aren’t as healthy as those prepared at home.

Try different methods of food preparation

A study found that while many school children did not like cooked vegetables, home prepared vegetables were preferred to those received in school. It also reported that the texture of the product was another important factor that influenced the consumption of fruits and vegetables.

The study results determined that the “positive aspects of texture that were mentioned were crispy, crunchy, and juicy which contributed to children's preference for fresh, raw fruit and vegetables.”

From fresh, crisp salads to grilled vegetables, there are many ways to prepare a vegetarian meal that will keep your athlete asking for more. Get in the kitchen with your athlete to experiment with the different ways of preparing their meals. Try different cooking methods like roasting, which brings out the natural sweetness in the food. Using a variety of seasoning blends, sauces, and flavored oils also helps to jazz up boring foods like chicken and vegetables.

_____

Whether your adolescent athlete is committed to a plant-based diet or not, it’s vital to their overall health to reinforce the importance of fueling their body with nutrient-dense, whole foods.

Five strategies to help your athlete manage performance and social anxiety

Every athlete will likely feel some kind of nerves during practices or in competition. Some athletes thrive under pressure and embrace the nerves, while others will crumple if not bolstered by a supportive coach and team.

Nerves aren’t inherently bad, and they can actually indicate interest in sport, but it’s important for athletes to learn how to manage anxiety for long-term mental wellness, especially since the anxiety created by sport is often similar to the social anxiety experienced outside of sport.

To help athletes control their sport anxiety, TrueSport Expert Kevin Chapman, PhD, clinical psychologist and founder of The Kentucky Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, has some suggestions.

Sports should reduce anxiety, not cause it

Emphasizing the ‘fun’ aspect of sport is important at all ages, especially in the adolescent years. It’s easy to get caught up in the points spread or results as a coach, but that’s not the main reason sports matter for youth. Research has shown that playing sports can have positive impacts on mental health and anxiety in young people, and ultimately, it’s important to understand that for many young athletes, this will be the greatest benefit that sport will provide them. With that in mind, coaches and parents’ language and behavior should reflect that the goal of playing sport is the social and physical benefits, not the scholarships or tournament wins. For example, make your first question after a game, “What was your favorite part of the game?” rather than “What did you do wrong today?”

Teach mental strategies early and often

Coaches are often so bogged down by mandatory practices, busy competition schedules, and other demands on their time that they completely skip over the importance of teaching mental strategies to athletes. But visualization and other mental techniques have been shown to improve performance.

Start early in the season with a discussion of mental techniques and make practical recommendations, Chapman says. Walk athletes through a visualization exercise that they can do before games, have everyone download a free guided meditation app, and have a discussion of what success looks like for this team, this year.

Avoid failure avoidance

When athletes are nervous or anxious, they often fall into a failure avoidance mentality, meaning that they begin to avoid taking risks that could end in failure. The problem with that, Chapman explains, is that while an athlete is avoiding failure, they are not going to be trying to win or to improve, they are just going to be trying to "not mess up.”

To avoid this mentality, explain early in the season that the goal for the team isn’t to win every game, or sink every shot, but to actually try new techniques, take risks, and make mistakes. Praise attempts, including the ones that fail, to create a culture where students can feel safe pushing their limits in sport.

Remembers, coaches can continue offering advice for improvement while fostering a positive outlook on failure. “Rather than saying something like, ‘Stop turning the ball over,’ a coach could try to say, ‘Focus on having better ball control,’” says Chapman. Flip your script to focus on positives rather than calling out errors.

“Punishment is meant to decrease behavior, whereas reinforcement is meant to increase behavior,” he adds. "And reinforcement is much more powerful than punishment. Therefore, the best way to get an athlete to do the right thing is to say something reinforcing."

Anxiety isn't always about winning and losing

According to Chapman, “The team dynamic piece is important and can cause a lot of anxiety as well. Social anxiety, fear of teammates making fun of you if you miss a shot, teammates won’t like you if you don’t act a certain way—that’s another huge contributor to anxiety in athletes. It always comes back to a fear of a negative evaluation.”

But this type of anxiety can be harder to recognize because, as the coach, you’re not in the same culture as the athletes. You aren’t privy to their texts and other communications, but you can help to create a team culture that doesn’t allow for bullying or the idea that winning is everything.

Listen to your athlete

There comes a point where the anxiety produced by a sport outweighs the benefits of playing. Chapman explains that if an athlete isn’t deriving any pleasure from playing, it may be time to consider a new sport rather than pushing through. “If an athlete is anxious before a game but always thrilled afterwards, that’s fine,” he says. “But if the anxiety never goes away, that’s a signal that there is a problem. I think that if they have a low desire, you never should push a kid to play, period.”

Takeaway

Sport anxiety is not preventable, but it should be manageable. It’s up to parents and coaches to communicate and behave in way that reduces anxiety around sport performance and reinforces the positive benefits of sport.

Reducing anxiety to make game day as good as practice

Game-day performance anxiety is common in athletes of any age, but the worst possible time to start tackling it is, unfortunately, on game day. Yet most coaches ignore the potential for pre-game jitters until the last minute, when a pep talk is the best anxiety-reducer that they can provide.

But with a few shifts in your coaching throughout the season, you can help foster a team that’s as mentally prepared for game day as they are physically prepared. Specializing in sports-based anxiety, TrueSport Expert Kevin Chapman, PhD, clinical psychologist and founder of The Kentucky Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, breaks down how you can best support your team.

Set expectations for competition that are process-oriented

According to Chapman, process-oriented goals give kids tangible things to focus on that they can control in a game. The more in-control your athlete feels, the calmer they will be.

“The reason outcome occurs is because certain athletes follow a process,” says Chapman. "To reduce anxiety and realize success, we can focus on processes like positive self-talk, game day tactics or strategies, mechanics or techniques, imagery and visualization, getting better, and having a learning mentality. When athletes focus on learning those things and perfecting them out of the love of the game, there’s always a successful outcome regardless of how bad or awesome an athlete plays.”

Watch your language around competition

Often, parents and coaches accidentally play into competition nerves. Telling your athletes that they are ‘absolutely going to wipe the field with the competition,’ screaming at competitors, and generally focusing on the score rather improvement is going to show athletes that winning matters most and everything else is a cause for distress.

Statements like “This is the big game,” or “This play could make or break the season,” are also likely to add to an athlete’s anxiety.

Help your athletes create rituals

To calm their nerves and focus on process, encourage athletes to create their own ‘down to business’ routines. That could mean creating a certain mantra, finding a lucky ‘talisman,’ or developing a ‘secret routine.’

“Most pro athletes have some kind of ritual, talisman, or secret pre-game routine that they do, and that's how they get into that game-day state,” says Chapman. "I think we really should be letting kids figure out what their secret routine is. What is going to help them feel focused and in the zone?”

Encourage your athletes to come up with their own rituals and stick to them on game day. For younger athletes, helping them write a mantra or practice visualization might work best.

Make practice like game day

If you can make some practices more like game days, then game days will feel more like practices, Chapman says. In more severe cases of performance anxiety or in higher-level sports, he actually will have hecklers in the stands during practice.

That may be extreme for a school or youth team, but as a coach, you can set up some practices to be like timed or scored competitions. Make it as realistic as possible: Set aside pre-game time for the usual pep talks and the time spent waiting for the game to start, have athletes do their own pre-game rituals, set up start and finish lines, put out the same food and drink you would normally have available on the sidelines, and even encourage athletes to wear their uniforms.

Takeaway

Game-day performances often look different from practice performances due to anxiety, which means that athletes need to focus on their mental preparedness as much as their physical preparedness. These strategies will get athletes mentally prepared and ready to manage anxiety to perform at their best on game day.