Game Day Nutrition

Now that you have a great understanding of food and fluid needs and personal preferences around games, it’s a good time to focus on a very important element in games and tournaments for softball athletes. Softball is a summer sport with games falling often in the warmest part of the day. Major annual competitions also take place at the peak of summer and athletes, during tournaments, can often play more than one game per day. For this reason, sweat rates can be high, which requires special attention to hydration strategies (see module 3 for a refresher). Another element to consider at these times are cooling strategies. 

Cooling athletes who are competing in hot environments can have a range of positive effects on performance;

·         Using cooling techniques may reduce the amount of energy the body needs to use to stay cool, leaving more energy for the game.

·         Using pre-game cooling strategies may assist in keeping body temperature lower at the start and athletes might therefore see a more gradual increase in sweat rates, allowing the body to reduce its overall sweat losses in the game. Increases in sweat losses and reduced opportunities to drink can result in dehydration, which at even levels as low as 2% can negatively affect performance.

·         The rise in our body temperature can also help reduced your “perceived effort”.  The hotter we get, the harder the work “feels”, so trying to stay cool, will make things feel easier, which general mean we can perform at a higher level for longer. Cognitive function (our decision-making ability) is also affected when hot and dehydrated, so managing this as best we can, will help with your game and tournament performance.