This post is brought to you by Mike Molloy from M2 Performance Nutrition!

As we covered in our last blog post, swimming is a very energetically demanding sport, and significant amount of calories can be required to keep us feeling energized throughout our workouts. While simply eating enough calories to support your training is a good starting point, thinking about the NUTRIENT TIMING of those calories is something to focus on if you’re looking to take your performance to the next level.

When we think about nutrient timing for any training session, we typically break it down into 4 stages: Pre-workout, Intra-workout, Post-workout, Post Post Workout. Focusing on each of these nutrient timing phases will help give you added energy for the current training session, and help you recover for the next days session too.

Let’s go over these 4 Nutrient Timing Stages more in depth!

1.) Pre-workout:

Approximately 60-90 minutes before your training session, consume a protein and carb based snack. Keep it relatively low in fat, as some research shows that higher levels of fat can slow down digestion and we want things digesting quickly here. Swimming with an uncomfortably full stomach is not the goal, so keep the snack on the lighter side. Often, we recommend something along the lines of “overnight oats” with a scoop of protein mixed in as well.

If you are typically working out pretty early in the mornings, then we obviously will need to adjust this step–as we’d prefer you to sleep longer, instead of waking up earlier just to eat a snack. With that said, we would still suggest you eat something before working out–even if it’s just an instant oatmeal pack or a piece of fruit.

Also, it’s VERY important to make sure that you CHEW your food well (no matter what time of day)–as this is the first step in the digestion process.

2.) Intraworkout:

For any training session that goes longer than 90 minutes, intraworkout carbohydrates have been shown to improve athletic performance. As for what to drink, we want to focus on two things: a little bit of carbohydrates and some electrolytes. Of course– Gatorade comes to mind, but we typically recommend a brand of coconut water called Greater Than, because of the composition of the minerals in the product and because its not overly loaded with sugar or artificial products. If you want to give it a try, use M2PN10 for a small 10% discount…

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