What to consume for performance

Kai Fusser, M.S.

How much time, effort and money have you spent over time to improve your golf game? Have you paid as much attention to your nutrition? A few nutrition facts: anything we do requires energy, and our only source of energy is coming from what we consume (food, fluids, oxygen, and sunlight) period! In addition, what we consume is what our body is made of. Every 90 days we get a new set of cells and approximately every year our body is completely renewed.

If we know this, why are we still compromising our system and its output by consuming sub-par nutrition? We keep derailing ourselves with bad habits, convenience, knowledge and cravings… My goal for this article is to discuss what to (or not to) consume before, during and after the game. Nutrition for health in general would be worth a book in itself as good nutrition is important for continued good health.

How does nutrition affect your performance? In the long run it determines your muscle strength, body fat, bone health, immune system and endurance. A more immediate affect is the determination of your energy level, concentration, mood, recovery and consistency. It is not only important what you eat right before and during the round but also days even weeks before. I tell my players that during a tournament week Monday’s nutrition intake will have an affect on Sunday’s round.

Days before: Eat 3 balanced meals and 2 balanced snacks every day - eating every 3 hours. Start with a good breakfast, mid morning snack, lunch, mid afternoon snack, dinner (after a tough day even a light snack at night). Each meal and snack should consist of quality protein and carbohydrates at about a 1 to 3 ratio (calculate off the food labels or use a nutritional value chart easily available on line). By the way, this regimen will benefit you in many ways for weight loss/control and general health.

Before play: Eat a balanced meal 1-2 hours before play - this again should be about a 1 to 3 ratio of protein and carbohydrates. The carbohydrates should come from a low (less than 55) to medium (55-70) glycemic index source (like fruits, vegetables and some whole grains) to avoid any sudden spike of the blood sugar level, which subsequently will lead to a sudden low/energy loss. Hydration is also important at this point and on a hot day should consist of water and a good electrolyte drink. Popular sports drinks are not suggested as they rapidly release carbohydrates into the blood stream and can therefore lead to an energy crash.

During play: On course snacks are critical for sustained energy and concentration. They should also contain a mixture of protein (i.e. nuts, meat jerky, meal bars or a shake) and carbohydrates (fruits, dried fruits, meal bars, shake). Protein is important to stabilize the blood sugar level to avoid any energy highs and lows. Keep hydrated by alternating water and an electrolyte drink throughout the round. Electrolytes are important for the optimum function of the nervous system which controls all of our moves.

A word of caution when it comes to supplementation to enhance performance: Products like protein and meal shakes, energy and electrolyte drinks, energy and meal bars, even some vitamins, minerals and fish oils can be of great value. I use and recommend them regularly to our pro players, but I urge you to select very carefully. The quality and purity of these products can vary greatly to a point of being dangerous to your health (some ingredients have shown up as banned substances during drug testing.) We will be happy to help you with some suggestions at the Academy.

To good eating,

Kai

The Fundamentals of exercising

By Kai Fusser, M.S.

We all heard about “functional exercises” by now, what does that really mean?
Playing golf, just like every other sport, requires the whole body to move all at the same time. Do you know of any sport where only part of the body is in action?
A good movement, or a golf swing in our case, is the sum of all muscles in our body working together. Not only do they need to work together but also at the right time.
This ensures great efficiency as the loads on the body are distributed throughout the whole system, every muscle does its part, and they all help each other. This requires the nervous system to be trained to give the command to each muscle to work at the right time. This can be learned and practiced.
Knowing this fact, it is hard to understand that anyone would want to work out on a machine. Most gyms are now stuffed with all those high tech, futuristic looking, color coordinated machines, some even come with a belt to buckle up. Seated or strapped in you immediately isolate part of your body, therefore that isolated part can not help the part that has to perform the movement. This teaches the nervous the wrong pattern. Not only that, the guided motion allowed in machines are mostly “one size fits all”, our joints all move in slightly different angles but the machine will keep them from moving freely so they are pressed into a motion different of your individual movement pattern. This will result in extra stress on the joints, the surrounding ligaments and tendons. It will also neglect to strengthen the surrounding tissue and stabilizing muscles as the guided motion will not require your body to stabilize that joint, which later will result in injury as the “machine strengthened” muscle will pull against the still weak surrounding tissue.
So in order to get a functional body for our sport (or even yard work etc. for that matter) we need to exercise functional. This means we need to be standing up and perform movements where our whole body is involved, using our own body weight, dumbbells, barbells, cables and balls. There are literally thousands of ways we can move our body functionally and as we go along in the upcoming issues I will teach you the right principles.
By the way, our body was designed to move freely since the beginning of time, who ever came up with the idea of restricting our movement?

See you soon,

Kai