Top Performance - Quick & healthy cooking

Team coach

Q: "How can I make sure that my players go home and eat a high carbohydrate meal? Some of the athletes can go home to home cooking with their families, but many of our players are young and single and living on their own. What can they do?"
A: The move away from home can place a lot of pressure on a young athlete. It can be hard to get organised on the domestic scene when you are used to Mum looking after you. Many young athletes lack nutrition knowledge and cooking skills, and this is not helped by arriving home tired from a late training session to find the cupboard is bare. It is a critical time in a sporting career, and poor nutrition can often be a downfall. A committed athlete and a wise team will identify problems early and find practical ways to make good nutrition part of the program.

Strategies for quick & healthy cooking

Look for recipe books for quick and healthy cooking, including special books written for athletes. These include: Survival for the Fittest: the AIS guide to cooking for busy athletes (AIS Dept of Sports Nutrition, 1999), Survival from the Fittest: A companion cookbook to Survival for the Fittest from athletes of the AIS. (AIS Dept of Sports Nutrition, 2001 ); The Taste of Fitness (O’Connor and Hay 1998).
Make use of commercial food products such as pasta sauces, frozen vegetable mixtures, pizza bases and quick-cook rice and pasta. There are many nutritious and time-saving products that can be quickly constructed into a tasty meal.
Learn to batch cook and freeze leftovers for another occasion. When arriving home late, it is great to be able to zap up a meal.
Organise for a sports dietician to run cooking classes or supermarket visits, to help you and your team mates become organised with shopping and cooking.

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