Sports nutrition plays a vital role in helping your body perform, recover, and thrive, whether you're a weekend warrior or a dedicated athlete. From the power of balanced, whole-food meals to the strategic use of pre-, intra-, and post- workout supplements, the right approach can enhance energy, endurance, and muscle repair. In this article, we explore how smart nutrition choices can support performance and help reduce delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) for faster, stronger recovery. 

Healthy Eating: An Important Component of Sports Nutrition

Carbohydrates are the fuel that muscle cells use to do their work. Protein makes the building blocks the body uses to repair damaged muscle and to build more muscle. It is important that you time your intake of these nutrients to give your muscles food to run on during exercise, and building blocks to repair themselves and grow afterward.

What Kind of Workout Supplements Should I Use?

Pre-Workout Supplements Benefits

It is generally a good idea to eat a small snack before the workout consisting of easy-to-digest carbohydrates. This can be as simple as eating a piece of fruit. There are a number of pre-workout supplement powders available. These often contain some essential vitamins and minerals, as well as energy-boosting supplements. So long as these elements are quickly absorbed and do not burden your digestive system, they can help increase your energy level as you go into your routine. Often these pre-workout supplements also include nutrients that help boost your muscle metabolism to help ensure you can get the most out of your workout.

It is important to warm up sufficiently prior to any exercise. This can be anything that gets your body gently moving for at least 5 minutes, such as a light jog, jumping rope, or slow jumping jacks. This gives your body the time it needs to increase your heart rate and promote increased blood flow to your muscles. Blood flow to the muscles is extremely important for promoting nutrient delivery and waste removal during your workout.

Intra-Workout Supplement Options

If you exercise for longer than 2 hours, then it is beneficial to include simple carbohydrates (complex sugars) to prevent the body from breaking down muscle and to rebuild depleted energy reserves. These carbohydrate boosts are often supplemented using an energy gel or bar.

The average person hitting the gym has very little dietary requirement during their workout. It is generally not necessary to eat during a workout unless it goes on longer than 2 hours. The premise is that your pre-workout snack should cover your energy requirements for the first 2 hours. Unnecessarily adding the type of carbohydrate boost mentioned above during a workout can interfere with achieving a weight loss goal and, in large enough amounts, can actually promote weight gain. This includes sugary beverages, even if they claim to be "sport drinks". Excess carbohydrate ingested above and beyond that used for activity is stored as fat in the body.

Fluid intake during exercise is also important to prevent dehydration. In general, it is most beneficial to simply drink water during a workout to keep a balanced fluid level, although with more strenuous activity a gentle electrolyte solution may help keep electrolyte levels up as well, which can reduce muscle cramping.

Post-Workout Recovery Supplements

The average person exercising to maintain fitness should eat and drink as soon as possible after a workout. This can simply consist of a healthy portion of protein, complex carbohydrates (starches), and fluid such as water. It's often not convenient to prepare a full meal immediately after a workout. One simple way to get the benefits of the meal, without the work, is to supplement with a protein shake or bar. These protein supplements often contain sufficient protein and carbohydrate to replenish what you lost during your workout. With protein powders, you are also mixing it in a fluid, which helps replenish fluid balance. If you are using this to replace a meal, you can also try a meal replacement powder, which will also contain essential vitamins and minerals that you may have depleted during your workout.

Those training harder for marathons or endurance events should include a much higher amount of carbohydrates and protein.

In general, fat should make up 20 - 30% of your daily caloric intake. Healthy fats are important for health, particularly skin, hair and digestive health.

How Can I Prevent DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness)?

Anyone who has ever done an intense workout is familiar with delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). DOMS is that feeling you get the next day, or even two days following a workout where your muscles are stiff, sore, and not as strong as they usually are. This is caused by the microscopic damage that strenuous exercise does to our muscles. An accumulation of tiny muscle tears and the buildup of lactic acid from exercise without sufficient oxygen and blood flow causes local pain. If you are having difficulty performing your normal activities the next day, it is generally a sign that your workout was too intense for your current fitness level. When this occurs, it is a good idea to scale back a bit until your fitness level improves, and then gradually increase your intensity over time.

If you are just trying to avoid the slight stiffness and sore muscles after a challenging workout, there are a few supplements that can help, such as branched-chainamino acids (BCAAs), or L-glutamine powder. Both of these are supplemented prior to a workout to help prevent the problem in the first place.