Meal Plans

As you will have gathered from watching the periodised nutrition video, depending on the requirements of your individual players diets can look very different from day to day. When your players return to you especially after a long break such as at the end of the season it is very likely that players will be at varied stages of fitness. The need for you as a coach to get all players back on track is essential to football performance and this can be done through targeted and individualised meal planning. Whether players need to lose body weight through a weight loss program or need to build muscular strength through a body building program, it is important that both training and nutritional advice match.

What should the players diet look like on a matchday?

As a coach ensuring your players are well equipped to perform well within matches is a top priority and although most will think of this in a physical manner nutritionally is just as important! It has been suggested that players also place and engage in nutrition more on a matchday (Burke, Loucks & Broad, 2006), which means getting it right is essential.

As you can see from the table, nutritional prescriptions are based on body mass. The means in order to monitor nutritional intake closely you as coaches will have to monitor the weight for your players to ensure you are accurate when planning meals for them not just on a matchday but throughout the week.

Building Muscular Strength

When building the strength of your players it is important to remember the nutritional steps you should take to support their training. From the periodised nutrition video, you will remember to build muscle a calorie surplus is required of around 500 Kcal. Remember this can be calculated using free online calculators by first gaining your BMR. Although the actual diet and calorie number will vary considerably between your players, why not take a look at the example diet below. REMEMBER, high protein intake and place carbohydrate around training sessions! This meal plan for a day is around 2500 Kcal so this would be suitable for a player with a BMR of around 2000 Kcal to build muscular strength.

Weight Loss

If some players are out of shape it is important nutritionally that meal plans are created that will allow effective but controlled weight loss. From the periodised nutrition video, you may remember that to loss weight players need to be put into a calorie deficit of around 500 Kcal. This has been proven to be the most effective and safe way to lose body fat. Again, much like the strength plan, players diets will be very specific to them, so taking time to plan them out is important to ensure each player is losing body fat safely. Why not take a look at the example meal plan for a day below to gain some ideas about how you may go about planning meals for your players! Again this is based on around a 1500 Kcal diet meaning it would be similar to what a player with a BMR of 2000 Kcal should be consuming to lose body fat.