RUGBY DAY NUTRITION PRINCIPLES

We’ll get to meal plans in a moment. But first, here are the four core nutrition principles that we recommend for carbohydrate-adjusted rugby players. If all else fails, stick to these principles, and you’ll be ok.

Eat familiar foods

With all the advice out there from your teammates and the Internet (including this article), it can be easy to take those recommendations and run with them. But eating foods that are unfamiliar to you just because someone recommends them is that last thing you should do. Your gut is very sensitive. Giving it something it’s never seen before and expecting it to react appropriately is a recipe for intestinal disaster. Always eat foods that are familiar to you the day before and the day of a rugby match. Even if we say “eat an orange” – if you don’t eat oranges, don’t eat one because we suggest it. Stick to something you have as part of your regular diet.

Micronutrients Matter

Rugby players sweat a lot. When they sweat, they lose critical sodium. This loss of sodium is essential to understand as it has a series of consequences for the body during physical exertion. As sodium levels decline, there is an adverse effect on potassium balance. If you don’t replace sodium, this potassium imbalance will result in fatigue and headaches. The solution? A pinch of sea salt in your pre-rugby water bottle. You can also incorporate berries, nuts, and seeds into your rugby-day meals which all contain appreciable amounts of potassium.

Notice that we don’t list cramping as a result of sodium depletion. If you’ve played rugby for a reasonable period, you’ll have seen players going down with muscle cramps. If you watched last week’s Pro Rugby game between Sacramento and San Francisco, this was clearly on display. Unfortunately for most players, the recommended solution to muscle cramping has long been “get him some water.” In recent years, the thinking has changed, with trainers recommending sodium as a way to eliminate cramping. Wrong again. Most muscle cramping is due to magnesium depletion in cells.

When someone is suffering from a lack of magnesium, intense exercise, sleep deprivation and a lack of fuel are all likely to cause muscle cramping or “twitching”. To avoid muscle cramping, eat raw dark green vegetables. If you have spinach, for example, don’t boil it. This dehydration process strips out magnesium from the plant’s leaves. You can also consider taking a slow-release magnesium supplement. But if you haven’t done this before, we suggest sticking to a few green vegetables.

Keep caffeine to a minimum

Studies have shown caffeine to provide performance benefits in rowers, cyclists, and endurance athletes. Wallabies halfback George Gregan was famously criticized in the late 90s for his use of caffeine tablets before rugby games. An attractive benefit of caffeine use is the perceived performance benefit. Rugby players are likely to rate their “perceived exertion” as lower if they consume small amounts of caffeine before games. However, over-consumption (more than 2 cups) of caffeine can cause significant stress on the adrenal gland. The minimum effective dose of caffeine for a 150lb rugby player would be one small cup of coffee. The larger you are, the more you can have, but don’t exceed two cups before a rugby game even if you’re huge.

This is particularly relevant if you’re using our pre-workout for rugby players called Pre-Game. Notice that the label says “contains 200mg of added caffeine”. 200mg is right around the upper limit for our recommended dosage of caffeine before a rugby game. If you’ve already had a coffee or a cup of tea in the morning, we do not recommend you take a full serving of Pre-Game. If you’re looking for endurance benefits, please consider an electrolyte and bcaa powder or No2 booster.

Fuel-up multiple times

As we mentioned above, your body’s natural stores of glucose in the form of muscle glycogen are pushed to the limit by an 80-minute rugby game. If you forget everything else in this article, the one thing we urge you to take away is that you need to eat something at half time in your rugby game! It can be a gel pack, an orange, some gummy bears or a cereal bar. But it needs to be something. We also suggest adding a small amount of sea salt to the water you drink at half time. These two tweaks to your rugby-day nutrition can have significant benefits just on their own.