The Holiday Blahs

By Jim Miller, MD, National Team Physician, FINA Sports Medicine Committee

Well, here we are again. The stroke clinics are over. The pre-season times are in the book, and it is time to get after it. The heavy holiday training season is upon us.

So, what actually happens to us physiologically during this training period, and how do we benefit from it all? Double practices with longer training sets typically are part of the Holiday fare. For those of you in school, training replaces sitting and studying. But with all of the extra training comes the potential to do damage to your body.

Let’s say hypothetically, a swimmer sleeps seven hours, drinks 40 ounces of water to maintain normal hydration and eats 3,500 calories per day with NO FAST FOOD! All of these parameters have to increase when the workload increases. If you do not adjust them, you can slide into a state of overtraining whereby the muscle cannot adapt to the workload and begins to break down.

Sleep needs to increase.
This will mean a mid-day nap following morning practice, but not so long as to interfere with your rest at night (or missing afternoon practice). A 60-90 minute nap should be enough.

Hydration needs to increase.
How do you know how much is enough, when everyone’s needs are very different? The easiest way is to look at your urine. You need to hydrate to the point that your urine becomes as clear as water, without yellow color.

This will require your usual water consumption during practice and adding as much as 64 ounces during the day. Hydration is critical to washing out impurities from muscle breakdown and refueling for the next training session. No matter how much water it takes, DO IT!

Calories need to increase.
High-quality calories are fuel. Fast food is not high-quality fuel . Eating fast, greasy food is like putting regular gas in a high-performance racing car. The old adage of “Garbage in/garbage out” really applies here.

Remember to fuel your body quickly after practice ends by eating healthy carbohydrates within the first 20 minutes of the workout. You can refer to the prior USA Swimming medical brief entitled “Is It All in the Water?” for more specifics.

The critical aspect is that you have to keep up with the calorie needs. If you fall behind and your muscle goes into failure, it may take weeks to get the balance back while continuing to train hard.

Many experts would equate the old term “over training” as starting with an imbalance of sleep, hydration, and nutrition when compared to the training load. However, you can avoid all of these problems and come out of the Holiday season ahead of the game without the Holiday Blahs.

Ready? Training commences now!

J is for Juggling Everything

BY AIMEE KIMBALL, PhD//Sport Psychologist
Athletes are dedicated. They are committed. They are willing to make sacrifices in their lives to help their sport performance. However, when you take this commitment to their sport and add a similar level of commitment to their academics, social lives, work and family, it can lead to a very difficult juggling act.

Take “Christina” for example. She is an athlete whom I work with that did not play well partly because she had done poorly on a paper and was stressed about it and partly because she didn’t get a chance to eat before her game and instead had taken a nap.

She was so tired because she was up until 1 a.m. finishing a paper. She was up so late because she had procrastinated and did not manage her time well. She had known about the paper for a week, but said that it wasn’t really that long or difficult of an assignment. She even admitted she could have done a better job managing her time because she probably didn’t have to watch “Grey’s Anatomy” (which took longer for her to watch than it did to actually complete the paper).

She also said her friend had a bad day, so she spent almost an hour on the phone talking to her. Because she waited until the last minute, waited until she was totally exhausted, and did not prioritize well, she not only did poorly on her paper she also did poorly in her game. Juggling her fun time, with her friend time, with her sport and academics proved to be too overwhelming. However, if she had thought it through and worked to manage her time and energy better, she could have been more successful in both her academic and athletic performance.

Unfortunately, I’m sure many of you can relate to Christina and are wondering how committed athletes who look for success in all areas of their lives juggle everything. Here are some suggestions to help you juggle your many demands successfully:

Recognize it’s hard to give 100% to everything all the time
You’re not a superhero. At some point something has to give, and that’s OKAY. It’s fantastic to strive to be perfect, but it’s unrealistic to expect it all the time in everything you do. Do what you can, the best you can, with what you have at that moment.

Know your true priorities and think long term
Make sure if you choose to sacrifice one area of your life for the benefit of another that you are not just focused on the here-and-now, that you are thinking about how prioritizing one area of your life will affect you 1, 5 and 10 years from now. For example, if you choose to put your social life first and go out with friends all night rather than working on a project or getting a good night sleep before your 6 a.m. practice, recognize that one year from now your grades might not be good enough to get you the job or get you into college, or, five years from now when your swimming career has ended you may regret not doing the little things necessary to help you to reach your fullest potential. However, when choosing your priorities, keep in mind that the odds of competing at the collegiate or Olympic level are against you. So, before you prioritize swimming over all else, make sure you don’t totally neglect the areas of your life that you have to rely on if/when competitive swimming ends. Again, think about the long-term effects of your decisions.

Know who else your decisions affect
As you are juggling the various aspects of your life, make sure you know what relationships might suffer. Whether it’s your relationship with teammates, coaches, friends, or family, when you are spending a good deal of time with one group your connection to others may begin to fade. It’s just something to consider as you try to balance your life.

Decisions don’t have to be totally wrong or totally right, they just have to be the best you can make at that time
Many people stress out because they don’t want to make the wrong decision. When several things are important to you, you are likely to feel that you are doing something wrong if you have to make a choice between two things you enjoy. When you struggle with such a decision, weigh the pros and cons, the long term effects, the people involved (including yourself), and make the best choice you can with the options available.

Balance the time and energy required for tasks
When you have lots of demands for your time, it is hard to get everything done. You can feel overwhelmed, stressed, and think that it is impossible to be you and be everywhere at once. When you have stress because of significant time demands, the best way to get control of it is to plan it out and learn to manage your time and your energy. First, get out a piece of paper and divide it into five sections. This is going to be your “to do” list. In the first column write down everything you have coming up. In the second column estimate how much time the task will take. In the third column, decide on a scale of 1-5 (1 being a little bit, 5 being a lot) how much energy the task is going to take. Then look at your list and prioritize-your fourth column is the order in which you are going to complete each task. The final column is the date or time you want to complete the task by.

To Do
Time Required
Energy Required
(1-5)
Priority
Completion Date/Time

I suggest doing the tasks that require the most energy first, the ones that require the most time next, then, with the remaining tasks, decide which are most important. The reason you want to do the tasks that use your energy first is because you want to do them while you still have energy and you don’t want to have them hanging over your head all day. You might have to call a coach and tell him that you are going to miss practice, something you dread and know it takes a lot of your energy to do but not necessarily a lot of time. If you wait until the end of the day, you’ll have been stressing over this “energy-draining” task all day, which can distract you from all of your other tasks (causing them to take longer than needed and possibly decreasing their quality). Also, once the “energy-drainers” are completed, that sense of relief of having it done can actually bring you an energy boost.

Juggling the various aspects of your life is a skill. If you can create good time management habits, set goals to help you choose your priorities, and learn how to deal with the stress of it all, you will develop the ability to be successful in multiple areas without having to sacrifice too much in others. Sometimes, there is a lot going on and a lot being demanded of you, but the more you work at it, the more things you can juggle at once.

Make it great!

Dr. Aimee

About Aimee C. Kimball, PhD:
Dr. Kimball is the Director of Mental Training for the UPMC Center for Sports Medicine. She is an Association of Applied Sport Psychology Certified Consultant, and is a member of the American Psychological Association, the United States Olympic Committee’s Sport Psychology Registry, the USA Swimming Sports Medicine Network, and the NCAA Speakers Bureau. She works with athletes, coaches, and parents to help them achieve success in sport and life.

For more information contact: kimballac@upmc.edu, 412-432-3777, http://sportsmedicine.upmc.com/MentalTrainingProgram.htm

The Importance of Breakfast

BY KATHLEEN WOOLF, PhD, RD//Correspondent
As a swimmer, many of your practices start early in the morning. When you rise before the sun, there is less time (and desire) for eating a healthy breakfast. However, breakfast is the most important meal of the day and can influence performance in school and the pool. A healthy breakfast should include whole grains, fruit, dairy and protein. Having breakfast as part of your daily routine is a habit worth keeping.

Time after time, research supports the importance of a good breakfast for top school performance. Kids who eat breakfast study, listen and concentrate better. In other words, skipping breakfast leads to poor school performance. Breakfast-skippers have lower intakes of many vitamins and minerals compared to breakfast-eaters. Physical performance also improves on the days a healthy breakfast is consumed.

If you have an early morning practice, your breakfast needs to be split in two: a “pre-event breakfast” and a “recovery breakfast.” Your “pre-event breakfast” is the last opportunity to “top off” your fuel stores before practice. Having a pre-event meal will delay fatigue during exercise. Include foods that can be quickly digested and absorbed, such as cereal and/or toast, fruit or 100% fruit juice and low-fat milk or dairy. You can even plan to eat the pre-event breakfast in the car on the way to practice. Peanut butter sandwiches, yogurt drinks, fruit, string cheese and bagels are all great examples of healthy “grab and go” foods.

Right after practice, you should eat your “recovery breakfast.” After your workout, your body is primed to store more carbohydrate than at any other time during the day, allowing your body to replenish its carbohydrate stores so that you are ready for your next practice or event. Carbohydrate-rich foods and beverages, such as cereal, 100% fruit juices, low fat milk and yogurt should be the core of your recovery breakfast. Also, include some protein, such as peanut butter, cheese, lean meat, or eggs, to help repair and rebuild muscle. If you don’t choose wisely, you will have a difficult time during your next workout.

Make sure you “break the fast” so that you can swim faster!

Kathleen Woolf, PhD, RD is a registered dietitian and a member of the American Dietetic Association, the Sports, Cardiovascular and Wellness Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group, and the American College of Sports Medicine. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition at Arizona State University.

From USA Swimming: COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Top American swimmers, including members of the 2008 U.S. Olympic Swim Team, will compete at the 2009 AT&T Short Course National Championships, December 3-5. Among the swimmers expected to compete are U.S. Olympians Rebecca Soni (Plainsboro, N.J.), Margaret Hoelzer (Huntsville, Ala.), Eric Shanteau (Lilburn, Ga ), and Katie Hoff (Towson, Md.). The competition will be held at the Weyerhaueser King County Aquatic Center in Federal Way, Wash. Additional Olympians competing at Short Course Nationals include Olympic gold medalists Garrett Weber-Gale (Milwaukee, Wis.) and Peter Vanderkaay (Rochester, Mich.), World Championship silver medalist Tyler Clary (Riverside, Calif.), Olympic bronze medalist Caroline Burckle (Louisville, Ky.) and Worlds bronze medalist Kasey Carlson (Walnut Creek, Calif.). Jessica Hardy (Long Beach, Calif.), who just took home the FINA World Cup female title, will also swim in the meet. Japanese Olympic gold medalist Kosuke Kitajima, who won both the 100m and 200m breast at the 2008 Olympics, will be back in the water in Federal Way. The swimmer, who did not compete at the 2009 FINA World Championships, is currently training with the Trojan Swim Club in Los Angeles. Many top Seattle-area swimmers will also compete in Federal Way, including Olympians Nathan Adrian (Bremerton, Wash.) and Megan Jendrick (Tacoma, Wash.), and World Championship gold medalist and world record-holder Ariana Kukors (Auburn, Wash.), and Andie Taylor (Issaquah, Wash.). The meet will follow the traditional schedule of morning prelims and evening finals with the morning sessions starting each day at 9 a.m. Evening finals begin at 5 p.m. Five to seven events will be contested daily. Footage from the meet will air nationally on NBC on Saturday, December 12 from 2 – 3 p.m. ET. All three days of prelims and finals will also be available for viewing on-demand at http://www.swimnetwork.com/.