Athletes who train and compete year round often will suffer injuries that will occur during their training in the off-season or during their season.  As these injuries occur, they seek treatment with sports chiropractors as well as other health providers to stay fit, healthy, and to avoid injury.  Often, an area that gets overlooked is nutrition because of the intense focus one places on the other elements of their sport.  This blog will address how to improve your nutrition to optimize your training and your performance year-round.

Nutrition is a topic that most of us know something about from the many topics that are discussed in the news.  What is often overlooked is identifying the current foods you consume on a daily and weekly basis.  Daily food notes are helpful, but often are difficult to keep up with because of the amount of recording that is required.  Often, sports chiropractors who understand nutrition work with their athletes to analyze and improve their current food consumption.  For example, most of us do not consume enough fruits and vegetables daily.  Increasing both of these food groups lowers inflammation, increases energy and fatigue, as both of these food groups contain numerous vitamins and minerals that are necessary for optimizing improved digestion and lowering the risk of several chronic diseases.  Many of these vitamins and minerals help our performance to improve how our organs function, thus, allowing us to train longer and faster.

Also, consuming appropriate forms of seafood and animal protein are necessary for increasing power and strength.  Foods such as beef, pork, and fish provide necessary nutrients (protein, salt, cholesterol, fat) that aid our body’s physiology in sustaining our workouts and competition.  Your body will store what it needs, but understanding your blood chemistry plays a pivotal role in your performance.  It is important to get blood work done and analyzed, in addition to completing a symptom survey (a nutritional guide), 1-2x per year to determine what, if any, nutritional deficiencies may be present affecting your training and/or performance.  Once these tools are completed and discussed with your sports chiropractor, you can begin to see the results from these changes quickly as you stay committed to implementing them.

It is not easy to stick with nutrition because we all cheat (at times), but it is often paramount to working harder than your competition to achieve the goals you seek.  Sports chiropractors, like myself, help my patients get to the next level.  A little work now creates more success later.

Brian Marion DC, CCSP, ART, CKTP

Lincoln Park Chiropractic 2202 N. Lincoln Ave Suite 1 Chicago, IL 60614

(773) 248-2790 www.lincolnparkchiropractic.com