Episode 198: How to Fuel Your Gymnast for Summer Upgrade Season

So what are your gymnast's goals? You know, I think it's important that three or four times a year, you know, you and your gymnast sit down and check in and reflect on how things are going, right? How did things go this comp season? How did we do in terms of strength, power, and endurance? How did we do in terms of, you know, physical health, right? Were we sick all the time? Did we get sick back to back, or were we able to stay healthy? Um, what have the coaches been saying? How is their mood? How is their emotion regulation? How are their energy levels, their fatigue? And just sitting down and even talking through this, or as a parent, kind of recounting this, you know, even in your head, can be an amazing place to start because we don't want to keep making the same mistakes.

And more than likely, your gymnast's body is giving them signs, it's giving you signs that things need to change, that they need some extra support from a nutrition standpoint.

But it's easy to miss those signs because under-fueling and problems with nutrition is so rampant in this sport that if you're just comparing your gymnast to everyone around her, you will be falsely convinced that what they're experiencing is normal.

And literally just today, I got a message from a parent who told me her gymnast now realizes how bad she was feeling a couple months ago.

And when she came to us a couple months ago, she had actually had an iron infusion because of iron deficiency anemia, which if you listen to some of our episodes about iron and minerals and HMA and labs, you know, often when gymnasts are diagnosed with iron deficiency and/or anemia, it's not actually because of a lack of iron, it's more of an iron mobilization and recycling problem.

And if you treat that with a massive dose of iron, like an infusion or even oral iron, it often will not work, or it won't work long term because you haven't addressed the underlying mineral issues.

And it's really interesting to hear that from Mom, because I think she felt a little bit better after the iron, but when we really dug in, she was massively under-fueled, which that under-fueling creates inflammation that blocks iron absorption, so, like, how much did that infusion really do? But secondly, she was a really picky eater and had a very limited diet, so she wasn't getting enough of these other minerals and co-factors to help the iron actually get where it needs to go in the body.

And so when we addressed those two things and did not continue giving her iron, she now feels so, so much better.

And so I think the really hard part of working with gymnasts is they're so incredibly tough that they often just don't know what they don't know.

And so even if you were to ask your gymnast today, like, "How did you feel through season? How was your energy? How was your endurance?" They're probably gonna tell you it was fine because they don't know what feels better.

But as a parent or as a coach, and for myself, like as a judge and as a dietician, you know, I can look at someone or I can look at their scores or I can listen to how they describe things and usually pick up pretty quick on like, "Hmm, you know, that doesn't sound quite right," right? Like if you're struggling with XYZ skill and I know what kind of gym you're at, and I know what their conditioning is, and I've, you know, even worked with other gymnasts at your gym who have been properly fueled, like if you're falling behind or you're struggling, this actually probably is more of a root cause nutrition issue, not a lack of training, lack of strength and conditioning, lack of private lessons issue.

And I think that's what everyone needs to understand when it comes to the upgrade season, is it doesn't matter how much your gymnast trains, it doesn't matter what camp she goes to, it doesn't matter what clinics, it doesn't matter if she's doing weightlifting, strength and conditioning.

It-- like none of that stuff matters if she's not going into that workout with enough fuel to support growth and development, repair, recovery, and adapting or getting better, faster, stronger from your training.

And you may not know this, but the off-season, the upgrade season for any sport is the time to get stronger.

Like, that is the time to focus in on strength and conditioning.

That is the time to focus on endurance and building that aerobic base.

The time for that is not during the actual competition season.But the only way that your gymnast's body can get better, faster, stronger is if we're giving the building blocks that they need, AKA through nutrition.

It takes two things for your gymnast to get better, faster, stronger.

We have to have a stimulus, right? So that's the training, that's the strength and conditioning.

It's all the stuff that they're already doing or maybe doing more of this summer.

That's the stimulus, but we have to pair that with the building blocks.

And I feel like in the last couple of weeks as I've been talking with gymnasts, you know, post-season, kind of debriefing how comp season went, starting to rework their schedule for the summer, you know, I'm often like, "Hey girl, you know, we can't run off air and vibes." Like, we can't go to a five-hour summer training and not eat breakfast or only have a Celsius or only have a coffee.

Like, that is not enough fuel.

You might as well just not go to gym or walk out halfway through practice if you're going to fuel like that because that is not the right building blocks for your body to do what it needs to do and for you to get the results that you wanna get.

And so more than likely, whatever your gymnast's goal is for this summer and this next comp season, it absolutely has something to do with nutrition, and that's probably getting more powerful, getting stronger, having better endurance.