Diet and Nutrition

Eating Guidelines for optimum Golf Performance

In a bid to improve their performance, athletes spend a great deal of time training hard for very long hours to increase their fitness levels. Even though there appears to be a positive link between increasing your training load and improved fitness, most athletes recognize that there is also a fine balance between training, recovery and nutrition.

Being a professional golf player, the sport requires tactical and technical skills as well as balance and agility. Training involves many hours on the golf course and focuses on strength, aerobic endurance, and flexibility to minimize the risk of injury, skills, tactics and concentration. Success often relies on the ability to concentrate fully, sometimes over a few days.

Blood sugar levels and dehydration, affect skill and concentration, so nutritional strategies, must optimize these. In order to do this, we must first look at a balance diet.

Now what do we mean by "balanced diet"?

A balanced diet consists of sufficient quantities of the following:

Carbohydrates:

No matter what your sport, carbohydrate food is the main fuel source for optimal performance. Exercising muscles rely on carbohydrate as the main fuel source. Therefore diets low in carbohydrate often lead to a lack of energy during exercise, loss of concentration and delayed recovery. Enjoy a variety of carbohydrate-rich foods to optimize your nutrient intake, focusing on nutrient-dense carbohydrates that are also rich in vitamins, minerals and fibre. Always have portable choices such as fruit, yoghurt, sport bars and dried fruit on hand.

If you have little appetite and/or suffer from stomach discomfort (for instance, before exercising) then compact easy digestible carbohydrate foods should be eaten, like white bread with honey of jam.

Carbohydrate-rich foods include wholegrains, cereals, fruit, certain vegetables and sugar.

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