What are the best vitamins for ski athletes? Sports nutrition for skiers and racers - TOP supplements! Additional sports nutrition for skiers

Athletes involved in various sports are recommended to have their own individual nutritional plan. An optimally thought-out diet and the active additives included in it will help the skier prepare for important competitions and show excellent results on the slope.

Preparing ski racers for competitions

You need to prepare for the performance four weeks in advance. The first two of which the skier needs to eat food with a high level of protein and low carbohydrate content (if possible, completely eliminate it). By protein food we mean: cottage cheese, all types of cheeses, eggs, nuts, fish and lean meat (boiled or steamed).

Sports nutrition for skiers and racers

During this period, the body is completely cleansed of carbohydrates accumulated in it, and becomes ready to accept the next “portion” of fresh carbohydrates.

Also, do not forget about nutrition before training to improve your tone, it will also help here, they will help you better gather and focus before training.

This will take the next two weeks. During them, protein foods are completely excluded and foods with a high level of carbohydrates are used. What does this mean?

Rice, buckwheat, bread, oatmeal, various sweets, beans, beans, honey and so on. Carbohydrates newly introduced into the body of a skier-racer will give him additional energy during competitions. There is also a list of foods that should be completely excluded from the diet of a ski racer, both during preparation and during competitions.

These include: spicy and fatty dishes, sour cream and other dairy products, with the exception of cottage cheese, meat cooked over fire, pickled vegetables or vegetables, butter.

But any plant food rich in vitamins and minerals will only be beneficial. Any cereal, honey, berries, apples will be a good source of energy for a skier.

While on the track, if time allows, you can drink warm water with sugar, a weak cranberry infusion, low-fat, strained chicken broth, black tea with lemon and sugar, and nutritious oatmeal infusion.

A skier cannot do without additional nutrition, since after prolonged and intense exercise the body is exhausted and there is a need to saturate and restore it.

Dietary supplements, namely mineral-protein mixtures, will help with this.

Similar means are also used by athletes for strength training. If performances take place in the autumn, when such a phenomenon as vitamin deficiency is common, then it can be avoided by taking standard vitamin complexes without abusing them, since the body absorbs only a certain amount of them, and the rest is excreted in the urine.

Report by a teacher at the Alatyr Technological College of the Ministry of Education of the Chuvash Republic

Makarov Vladimir Ivanovich

Skiers' meals

As a preface to an article on the nutrition of skiers, we can cite the words of the world famous Swedish skier Sixten Ernberg, who, when asked how a skier should eat in order to increase his results, answered that he personally prefers to eat everything edible. This phrase has not only a philosophical, but also a practical meaning. A person needs to use for food what he considers tasty and pleasant.
If we take into account the practical experience of what exactly athletes who show high results in competitions prefer to consume, then fans of an original approach to nutrition will be disappointed. Athletes prefer not deli meats or high-calorie foods such as caviar or crabs, but simple, one might say peasant food, for example, oatmeal, which is poured with kefir or milk, and flavored with jam for taste. Or, it could be an omelet with a few sausages. And, of course, coffee or tea, and after such a meal, famous athletes go to the start line.
As for the pre-workout period, you can eat high-calorie foods, but their volumes should be moderate. Excess overloads the stomach, which makes breathing difficult, the diaphragm can rise up and put pressure on the heart, and a host of other associated negative factors. Therefore, it is necessary to accustom yourself to small amounts of food, but increase the number of meals. Five to six meals a day are considered optimal.
What foods should a skier avoid?
The first among the forbidden foods are animal fats, which include butter. If a skier gives up this painfully familiar product, he can take noticeable steps to improve his results.
This should also include spicy, fatty, salty dishes, kebabs, kebab, pickled vegetables and fruits, etc.
Sour cream is completely unsuitable for athletes, neither before training nor before a race. This is because this product can block the liver because it contains a lot of fat and the liver cannot cope with processing it.
A well-known and widespread recommendation is that for a skier, plant foods are preferable, and dairy products, with the exception of cottage cheese, should be excluded. This ban is explained quite simply. All dairy products, to one degree or another, have fermentation properties. After consuming them, bloating and microflora disturbance may occur. This does not depend on what kind of processing they were subjected to; it is almost impossible to avoid these consequences. Cottage cheese has no such side effects.
What foods are good for skiers?
Oatmeal and other cereals

Not many people like this product. But if an athlete is not indifferent to how his stomach copes with the food he eats, against the backdrop of increased stress, he needs to get used to oatmeal. It should occupy the most important place in a skier’s assortment. You can use it with some pleasant additives - it could be jam, raisins, prunes, dried apricots, honey, here you can use your imagination.
Honey
Especially in combination with nuts: hazelnuts, walnuts or those that are available. If it's pine nuts, that's great!
Plant food

Here, first of all, it is necessary to note apples, especially those varieties that are close to Antonovka and contain a large amount of iron. You can independently determine how much iron is contained in a certain type of apple; just cut it and leave it for several hours. If it changes its color to red overnight, it means there is a lot of iron in it, and its consumption will bring maximum benefits.
Black currant

Very useful, especially when rolled with raw sugar. In lemon and black currant, vitamin C is retained throughout the year. In other fruits and berries it can persist no longer than mid-winter. Scientists explain this by the fact that even in the well-known lingonberries, cloudberries, cranberries, not to mention other berries and fruits, there is “ascorbokinase” - an enzyme that decomposes vitamin “C” and leaves nothing but a pleasant acid. But this enzyme is absent in blackcurrant and lemon, which makes these two products completely unique.

advice is given by Lev Nikolaevich Markov, Honored Doctor of the Russian Federation, Master of Sports in Skiing, President of the Federation of Sports Medicine of Russia. Here's what he advised.
What foods should skiers not eat?
animal fats (butter). If there is a skier who can give up this product so familiar to us, he will take a good step towards improving his results;
fatty, spicy and salty meat dishes (kebabs, kebab, oriental dishes, etc.);
sour cream, because it has the property of blocking the liver (it contains a lot of fat, and the liver cannot cope with its processing);
milk and most dairy products, as components that have fermentation properties to one degree or another, after their consumption, bloating occurs and the intestinal microflora is disrupted (this remark does not apply only to cottage cheese and baby milk food).
Remember that the simpler and more natural your diet is, the better. And, of course, if you are accustomed to a certain food and your body tolerates it normally, then you should not give it up.
Here's what I would strongly recommend:
oatmeal and rolled oatmeal porridges with various pleasant flavors in the form of jam, raisins, prunes, dried apricots, apricots;
oatmeal doused with kefir, also with sweets;
boiled meat, sausages with scrambled eggs, various cheeses, cottage cheese, fish, eggs, baby milk food;
borscht, mushroom noodle soup, low-fat chicken or meat broth, fruit soups, vegetable okroshka, good dumplings;
from fruits, primarily raw black currants and lemon, as the only products where vitamin C is preserved throughout the year;
apples, especially varieties close to Antonovka, containing a lot of iron. This is easy to determine - cut the apple and leave it until the morning. If by morning it turns red, it means there is a lot of iron and it is useful;
multivitamins in the spring, 3-4 peas per day, but no more;
a variety of juices, fruits, vegetables, honey in combination with walnuts, hazelnuts and pine nuts;
when the load increases, it is useful to consume such exotic plant products as Chinese lemongrass, ginseng, and Leuzea. However, you cannot “overdo” them, as this can lead to very strong tachycardia (rapid heartbeat).
During training, riders lose a lot of fluid, along with which salts and trace elements are released. The body's water-salt balance requires restoration. Therefore, you should drink at least 2.5 liters of liquid during the day. The simplest thing is to slowly drink a glass of sweet tea with lemon after finishing your workout.
In conclusion, we would like to recommend that young skiers try one of the menus of our Olympic champions on the day of the start or long training.
Breakfast: a glass of orange juice, a good portion of oatmeal, flavored with tangerine jam, a sweet apple. After finishing the workout - a glass of fortified apricot mixture.
Lunch: fruit salad, a plate of low-fat chicken broth, natural schnitzel with 4-5 potatoes, a glass of dried apricot compote.
Afternoon snack: banana.
Dinner: a bottle of mineral water, a slice of boiled ham - 100 g, a portion of cheese 40% fat - 50 g, 2 oranges. As you can see, there is nothing supernatural. Everything is simple, natural and useful.

Please tell us about a skier's diet.
What foods are most effective at improving athletic performance?
Do I need to take vitamins and any medications during training, and which ones?
What is the best way to recover after long and strength training?

Maxim LOZOVOY, Vitaly Maksimov, Bratsk-54, Irkutsk region

Swede Sixten Ernberg, in my opinion, the best skier of all time, once spoke very well about the nutrition of a racing skier. When asked how to eat better to improve performance, he replied:

"I prefer everything edible."

This phrase has a great practical and philosophical meaning. What a person considers pleasant and tasty in food is what should be used.

And yet, some traditions and specifics have developed that make the food of a gamer, weightlifter, or wrestler different from the food of a skier. I have been to big skiing competitions, world championships, the Olympics, and these famous ultra-marathon races many times, and I looked closely at what the strongest foreign athletes prefer a few hours before the start. At first I was surprised, but then I began to take what I saw completely calmly. It turned out that this was not meat or some kind of high-calorie food such as crabs or caviar. It turns out that this is simple, so-called peasant food. For example, oatmeal filled with milk or kefir with the addition of jam. Well, maybe two or three sausages with an omelet. Naturally, a cup of tea or coffee. Here is the entire nutritional arsenal of a skier before a 100 km race! It may seem to us that this is not enough; as practice shows, it is quite enough. There are, of course, some national traditions. For example, our people, apparently due to many years of food shortages (wars, famines), have developed the habit, passed on from fathers to children, to consume food in large quantities (as if for future use).

I would recommend using high-calorie foods during the training period, but still in small volumes, because large volumes overload the stomach, make breathing difficult, lift the diaphragm upward and put pressure on the heart, etc. - there are a lot of all sorts of accompanying “charms”.
Therefore, you need to accustom yourself to having small amounts of food, but you should eat more often. Five meals a day are considered optimal.

What products should a skier use first? Let's start with what you shouldn't eat:
- animal fats (butter). If there is a fanatic skier who can give up this product so familiar to us, he will take a good step in order to improve his results;
- fatty, spicy and salty meat dishes (kebabs, all kinds of peppery kebab, salty dishes, etc.);
- sour cream. This product is not suitable for athletes. Not before the race, not before training. Sour cream has the property of blocking the liver - it contains a lot of fat, and the liver cannot cope with its processing.

There is such a catchphrase: “Dairy-vegetable foods are very useful for an athlete-skier.” So I would exclude the word “dairy” from this phrase. With the exception of one product - cottage cheese. There is a common illusion: “A big guy, he grew up in the village, on a steam farm.” milk." No, fresh milk is not suitable for a skier - it’s better to do without it. All dairy products have fermentation properties to one degree or another - after consuming them, bloating occurs, the microflora is disrupted, and no matter what you do, whether you consume them in the form Varentsa with chiffchaff or steamed milk, you will not be able to avoid these consequences.I will not say that dairy food is certainly harmful, but there is nothing good in it either.

Yes, cottage cheese is great.

What is possible? Oatmeal porridge. And although many of our people are not accustomed to this food, if you care about how your stomach copes with the food you have taken in the background of significant loads, you need to get used to oatmeal, no matter how tedious it may be - it should prevail in the skier’s assortment. It can be consumed with some pleasant flavoring additives: jam, raisins, prunes, dried apricots, honey, etc. - Please, there is a huge scope for imagination.

Honey is also good in combination with various nuts: walnuts, hazelnuts - those that are available. Maybe in Siberia it will be pine nuts - even better. But as for plant foods, then, of course, first of all, apples are preferred, especially varieties close to Antonovka, which contain a lot of iron. Determining the iron content in an apple is very simple - cut it and leave it until the morning. If it turns red by morning, it means there is a lot of iron in it - these are the apples you should eat.

Black currant is extremely useful. Especially, you know, when it’s rolled like this with sugar, raw, as they say, “alive.” Why? Only two products of the plant world - black currant and lemon - retain vitamin C throughout the year. In other fruits and berries it lasts until January at most. This is explained by the fact that even in the famous cranberries, cloudberries, lingonberries (not to mention other fruits and berries) there is an enzyme - “ascorbokinase”, which over time decomposes vitamin C, and there is nothing left but a pleasant sourness. But lemon and black currant do not contain this enzyme. This circumstance makes these two products of the plant world absolutely unique.

About nutrition on the track. Previously, I remember, before each marathon race, athletes would go with their jar of currants, some with blueberries, some with lemon or cranberries. Some added sugar to their drink, others added glucose, buying it in powders, tablets or even ampoules. They stirred, dripped some incredible drops and let everyone try... It was a whole action! Then everything was simplified: they began to prepare ordinary sweet tea with lemon. And the next step has become even simpler: these modern powders have appeared: “Getoride”, “Isostar”, “Isotonic”, “Dexal”. Dilute in warm water, and that's it - the food is ready. But personally, to me, the old method - when you prepare the food yourself - seems both more interesting and more productive. Oatmeal broth is very interesting as one of the varieties of nutrition at a distance. And if you take a cup of this decoction before the start, it will also be very good. There is, however, one “but”. You cannot make milk-based oatmeal. In principle, there is nothing wrong with this. But throughout the entire distance, you will be deprived of the opportunity to take any other drink: based on cranberries, black currants, lemon, etc., since you will have a coagulation of dairy products in your stomach and there will be a lot of troubles: from intestinal upset to some vomiting moments, etc.

Unlike oatmeal broth, I never advise you to drink glucose before starting. If you drink a cup of glucose before the start, you will lose speed for some time during the race - the body's reflex will be such that you will go at a low sugar level.

Sodium and potassium salts must be present in the diet. Therefore, if you are into a diet where you have black currants, lemon, add some dried apricot broth, this will be a wonderful drink.

About the broth. I would say that all fatty foods are bad for you. And still. Chicken broth, strained and salted several times, can be very beneficial during a marathon because once it enters your stomach, it will have a long-lasting effect on your body. This is very good. Well, well, the athlete trains and puts in a lot of effort and energy. Should he receive anything additional besides regular food? Undoubtedly. And although I expressed some negative judgments about dairy products above, baby milk nutrition will still be extremely useful. Various mineral-protein mixtures that weightlifters use in their training are available for public sale.

To prevent heart overload, it is good to use special drugs rich in potassium: for example, potassium orotate. True, if you have the opportunity to regularly eat dried apricots, you can do without orotate. If cardiac overload has already occurred, when a negative wave appears on the cardiogram, it is useful to take the Japanese drug Inosium (Inosium R) or our Riboxin. By the way, our drug is somewhat purer than the Japanese one and does not give such painful stabbing sensations as its Japanese counterpart.

Multivitamins. They should definitely be consumed, especially in spring, 3-4 peas per day. But no more. The body simply won’t accept any more, and everything else will be excreted from it in urine.

About nutrition strategy. There can be many different methods, there are a lot of theories, but today I will tell you about one - the so-called “Swedish carbohydrate kick”. What is its essence? Four weeks before the start of important competitions for you, you should start eating protein foods and practically eliminate carbohydrates from food. What do I mean by protein food? Boiled meat (fried meat is generally bad), various cheeses, cottage cheese, nuts (without honey), fish, eggs, and so on - for two weeks. The point is that you limit the body in carbohydrates , but you train, the body needs them so much! And those, in simple terms, the reservoirs where you store carbohydrates are emptied. The liver and muscles are freed from carbohydrates.

After two weeks, you dramatically change your diet - completely eliminate proteins, or, in any case, reduce their consumption to the bare minimum. Eat plenty of sugar, honey, cakes, and sweets. For example, put a lot of jam in oatmeal porridge. Thus, you pump a lot of fresh carbohydrates into the reservoirs emptied over the previous two weeks. And - you start. And during the race, these carbohydrates enter the bloodstream and give you the energy you need. I have heard only positive feedback from skiers and marathon runners who have used this technique. When increasing loads, it is useful to consume such exotic plant products as Chinese lemongrass, ginseng, and leuzea - they do not belong to the group of doping agents. But if you consume them excessively, you can achieve very strong tachycardia (rapid heartbeat). I remember we trained with Boris Mikhailovich Bystrov and did acceleration uphill. So, having eaten this lemongrass, while still standing at the bottom of the mountain, I already had a pulse of 180 beats per minute! Clear overdose. Therefore, all these drops and tablets must be taken exactly according to the recipe that comes with them.

There are funny cases: I remember that shoots of Chinese lemongrass were brought to the Olympics in Sarajevo. Not grains, which, in fact, are consumed by Far Eastern hunters (it was they who discovered Chinese lemongrass, when, walking for several days in the taiga, they saved themselves from hunger and fatigue with this remedy), but shoots, tops. And it was, of course, both sad and funny to watch how, after chewing this tops, our biathletes then shot... well, just like crazy. Well, we came to our senses in time and dropped the matter. And the only “gold” that our biathletes brought from there was “gold” in the relay.

In conclusion, I want to say that a piece of meat, good dumplings, fruit soup, borscht, vegetable okroshka + nuts with honey, dried apricots, raisins, prunes - this food has not yet discredited itself.

Remember that the simpler and more natural your diet is, the better. And if, for example, you are accustomed to dairy foods and your body tolerates it normally, well, maybe you shouldn’t give it up (but still, take my recommendations more carefully). A sense of harmony, naturalness, and your personal comfort when eating food should be the main criteria for you.

What else would you add to this slightly outdated material on the following issues:
1. Special diets of highly qualified ski racers used by them in the preparatory and main periods of training?
2. Special “racing” mixtures, other than classic ones? For example, I, like thousands of other marathon racers, run oatmeal. Previously I used just jam diluted in water.
But there are probably newer mixtures, concentrates, etc. now. I'd like to hear who knows what.

And yet, in the last “Skiing” they interviewed the USSR Master of Sports Sergei Ivanov, with extensive experience in skiing:

- Maybe you eat something special?

Yes, there seems to be nothing special in my diet. For breakfast I always eat my own prepared mixture. For the past 25 years I have not been able to eat anything other than her in the morning. I buy muesli, mix it with rolled oats, add pine nuts, sunflowers, figs, raisins, hazelnuts and pour boiling water over it all. While I'm running, this mixture is infused. When I arrive, I mix it with yogurt and breakfast is ready. I usually drink tea with lemon and honey. In general, I really like honey. I eat it all the time, even using it instead of sugar. At first I didn’t like it, but soon I got used to it and now honey is an integral part of my diet. Second breakfast is usually yogurt or tea with gingerbread. For lunch in winter I eat soup, salad and always meat. Okroshka in the summer. Afternoon snack - again yogurt or tea, and for dinner - dumplings.

This is what the experts advise...

About skier nutrition

( Lev Markov, chief physician of the 1st medical and physical education dispensary, president of the Federation of Sports Medicine )

Swede Sixten Ernberg, in my opinion, the best skier of all time, once spoke very well about the nutrition of a racing skier. When asked how to eat better to improve performance, he replied:

"I prefer everything edible."

This phrase has a great practical and philosophical meaning. What a person considers pleasant and tasty in food is what should be used.

which is preferred by the strongest foreign athletes a few hours before the start. At first I was surprised, but then I began to take what I saw completely calmly. It turned out that this was not meat or some kind of high-calorie food such as crabs or caviar. It turns out that this is simple, so-called peasant food. For example, oatmeal filled with milk or kefir with the addition of jam. Well, maybe two or three sausages with an omelet. Naturally, a cup of tea or coffee. Here is the entire nutritional arsenal of a skier before a 100 km race! It may seem to us that this is not enough; as practice shows, it is quite enough. There are, of course, some national traditions. For example, our people, apparently due to many years of food shortages (wars, famines), have developed the habit, passed on from fathers to children, to consume food in large quantities (as if for future use).

I would recommend using high-calorie foods during the training period, but still in small volumes, because large volumes overload the stomach, make breathing difficult, lift the diaphragm upward and put pressure on the heart, etc. - there are a lot of all sorts of accompanying “charms”. Therefore, you need to accustom yourself to having small amounts of food, but you should eat more often. Five meals a day are considered optimal.

What products should a skier use first? Let's start with what you shouldn't eat:

Animal fats (butter). If there is a fanatic skier who can give up this product so familiar to us, he will take a good step in order to improve his results;

Fatty, spicy and salty meat dishes (kebabs, all kinds of peppery kebab, salty dishes, etc.);

Sour cream. This product is not suitable for athletes. Not before the race, not before training. Sour cream has the property of blocking the liver - it contains a lot of fat, and the liver cannot cope with its processing.

Yes, cottage cheese is great.

Sodium and potassium salts must be present in the diet. Therefore, if you are into a diet where you have black currants, lemon, add some dried apricot broth, this will be a wonderful drink.

Multivitamins. They should definitely be consumed, especially in spring, 3-4 peas per day. But no more. The body simply won’t accept any more, and everything else will be excreted from it in urine.