Fitness/Diet and Nutrition
How to build a good footballer
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Football is a demanding sport. Whether you are playing it as a hobby or with your sights set on the lifting one of those all-important cups, you need to keep your eye on the ball, (or should I say, your fork on the broccoli) to keep yourself in top condition.
So you might be wondering what food has to do with football fitness anyway? I’m here to tell you that it has everything to do with it and we’re going to take a trip through the human body to explain why.
Let’s start with the muscles, which you will agree are pretty important to being a good footballer. Our muscles are made up of muscle cells or fibres and to build these fibres we need plenty of protein in our diet (from food such as meat, fish, eggs, milk, beans or nuts). Without these foods, we don’t have the right ingredients to make strong muscles.
Our muscles have several jobs, one of which is to help us to move. Walking, running, jumping – all of these activities require our muscles to be working properly. Muscles need to be able to contract and relax so that we can move around. There is a complicated process that goes on in our muscles to make this happen and we need the minerals calcium to make sure that them contract and magnesium to help them relax.
To get more calcium and magnesium in your diet, you need plenty of fruit and vegetables as these are excellent sources of both minerals. Milk, yoghurt and cheese contain calcium and magnesium and so do nuts and seeds (walnuts, brazil nuts, hazelnuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds).
Exercise: Hold your arm out straight in front of you with the palm facing up. Bend it at the elbow and bring your hand towards your face. As you bend it, your biceps contract and your triceps relax. If you straighten it out again, the reverse is happening - your triceps contract to pull your arm back down and your biceps relax to allow it to happen. You have just used calcium and magnesium to do that!
Strong bones are also very important to any footballer and you don’t only need calcium to make good bones, you also need Vitamin K, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, Vitamin B6, Magnesium, Manganese, Copper, Zinc, Omega 3 & Omega 6 oils. All of these other nutrients are needed to do a number of jobs. Some stop the loss of calcium from the bones; some help to increase how much calcium goes into the bones while others help to build new bones. So, you need lots of fruit and vegetables, like apples, pears, cauliflower and carrots, wholemeal bread and pasta and some oily fish like salmon, tuna and sardines.
It isn’t only vitamins and minerals that build strong bones. Exercise makes our bones stronger too. As our muscles pull against our bones when we walk or run or jump, we are building bone by depositing minerals and collagen (which is another important part of our bones). In fact, lots of exercise when you are young helps your bones for the rest of your life!
Now, not everything helps us to make strong bones. Fizzy drinks like cola or orangeade are high in a substance called phosphoric acid, which can be harmful to the body. To protect itself from the effects of phosphoric acid, the body uses calcium …. and it takes it out of the bones to do so. Therefore, drinking lots of fizzy drinks can actually make your bones weaker and more prone to breaking. So, if you are thirsty, drink water or juice!
Exercise: Stand up from your computer and do five star jumps. As you did that, the action of your muscles moving across your bones, helped to deposit some of those important minerals, making your bones stronger and thicker. And of course, calcium and magnesium helped your muscles to make you jump.
Tendons, ligaments & cartilage are part of the body tissue that we call ‘Connective Tissue’. Tendons attach muscles to bones, ligaments attach bones to other bones and cartilage protects the joints where bones meet.
To keep these connective tissues strong and to repair any damage, you need plenty of protein like meat, fish and eggs in your diet.
You also need some healthy carbohydrates to give you glucose, as this is another ingredient that we need to make healthy cartilage, ligaments and tendons. The best source of this kind of glucose is from carbohydrates like wholemeal bread, brown rice, wholemeal pasta and porridge.
The protein and the glucose combine to form a substance called glucosamine which is very important in building strong cartilage, tendons and ligaments and also helps to repair any damage to them.
Exercise: When you have your next meal see if you can get some protein (meat, fish, eggs, cheese, beans) and some wholegrain carbohydrate like wholemeal bread or pasta or brown rice. These are exactly the kind of ingredients that will help you to keep your connective tissue strong and healthy.
So, you’ve got strong muscles, healthy bones and your tendons are in good shape too. Now you need good energy levels to keep you at the top of your game.
There are lots of vitamins and minerals that are involved in producing energy. We need B vitamins such as B1, B2, B3, B5 and B6. The mineral iron is vital as this helps to carry oxygen around the body to the muscles, so that they can do their job and magnesium and zinc are also important.
To get these vitamins and minerals and make sure that we have good energy levels we need to eat vegetables, fruit and wholemeal bread and pasta.
Sugary snacks, on the other hand, can make our energy levels worse in the long run. Although they might give us a quick burst of energy immediately after we have eaten them, over time they can make us feel slow, tired and lose concentration. So for energy during a game or when you are training, grab yourself a banana or an orange.
Exercise: Next time you are training or playing, take along some fruit to give you plenty of energy for the game – and make sure you’ve had a good breakfast – a boiled egg and toast would be ideal!
If you want to keep ahead of the others, you need a strong immune system to fend off the coughs and sneezes that are all part of the chilly football season. Running around the pitch is no fun if you have got a cold and are coughing and spluttering every time the ball comes near you.
Two important nutrients for our immune system are vitamin C and zinc. Both of these help our inner defences to keep the invading viruses and bugs at bay and keep YOU healthy throughout the playing season.
For vitamin C, try kiwi fruit, oranges and green vegetables like broccoli and cabbage. For zinc, fill up on nuts, seeds and a little red meat.
Exercise: This winter, make sure that you get plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables (at least 5 portions every day – a portion is about the size of an apple) to help you keep you healthy and germ-free for the playing season!