Hucclecote RFC

Nutrition guidelines for match days


Be The Best


Never believe you have insufficient time for the attention to detail
that is essential for excellence



The right nutrition can be the difference between performing to your potential and not performing at all – between training hard and making big progress and not being able to train hard enough to achieve any real changes.

‘Don’t put diesel in your Ferrari !’

• You must be very disciplined about what, how much and when you eat
• You must understand why you eat the things you do
• You must realise that short cuts don’t work, and that although you may see some immediate changes in how you feel, the real benefits may take 3-4 months to realise.

How professionals eat - before, during and after a game
Build up to the game On match day, if it’s a mid-afternoon game, England’s senior players will usually have a substantial breakfast, with a protein shake and maybe a bowl of muesli with eggs on wholemeal toast and beans. Lunch might be chicken breast with tomato sauce, pasta and broccoli about three hours before the match. Protein takes about that time to digest and carbohydrate takes an hour, so they might take a bit more of that on board before the match depending on how they are feeling. Remember the pre-match day food should be the last thing you are trying to change, once the rest of your diet is sorted out. Like most preparation for important events trying to fix it at the last minute rarely works.

Things to avoid eating and drinking on the morning of a match
• Alcohol
• Refined carbohydrates - white rice or white pasta
• Chocolate bars
• Fish and chips - full of saturated fats
• Large bowl of sweet cereals for breakfast - the body turns excess sugar into fat
• Fizzy drinks – they cause calcium loss
• Steak - takes a long time to digest
Things you can eat on the morning of a match
• No added sugar cereals or muesli
• Scrambled eggs with smoked salmon on whole grain toast
• Smooth drink with protein powder
• Plain yoghurt and fruit
• Porridge
• Egg whites, 3 or 4 with 1 yoke, scrambled and served with pepper, tomatoes or mushrooms
• Water
• Chicken, turkey or lean meat
• Whole wheat pasta or brown rice
Half-time refuelling
Hydration remains a very big thing and you can have a 10% loss of performance if you don’t drink enough. The players tend to drink Lucozade, often diluted so the players can drink more. There are now numerous studies that show the benefit of taking low concentration glucose polymers, e.g. Lucozade Sport, during training and playing. These drinks benefit in the following ways:

• They are isotonic and if less than 7% carbohydrate actually enhance fluid replacement – i.e. faster than just water
• They also replace electrolytes which are lost in sweat
• They help to maintain blood glucose levels which has the effect of sparing the precious muscle glycogen stores

Eating and drinking after matches In the aftermath of a match, today’s England players will initially re-hydrate then consume drink a protein drink that contains as much protein as a chicken breast within 10-30 minutes of finishing the game together with an initial intake of carbohydrate, about 75gms. Research shows you’ve got two hours as an optimum window to start to get your glycogen stores filled up and eat a proper meal as soon as possible after that. Players need a good hit of protein quickly because they can burn up a lot of muscle in a long event.

The day after a game
Many people believe they can eat less on the day after a game because they are less active but this is a fallacy. The day after a game is when you should be doing a lot of your recovery. During a game players will tear lots of muscle fibres and get bruising but that will also stimulate muscle repairing growth and even though it’s a rest day players need to make sure they get plenty of the right food. If you tear muscle fibres in your leg and don’t get enough protein, your body will break down the muscle fibres in another part of the body to build up the muscles. Recovery will be much slower.

Whilst it is important to try to cut down refined sugar intake in general, immediately after exercise is when your body craves and needs sugar most. If you take a high sugar carbohydrate immediately after exercise (but also after you have re-hydrated!) then you will get a positive insulin burst – you body will shift the glucose into the muscle and store it more rapidly than by consuming any other forms of food.

Post exercise insulin spiking has been linked with prevention of muscle mass loss and over-training. Also, the combination of protein and carbohydrate is proven to be more effective in preserving muscle mass than carbohydrate alone.