The Optimal Athlete Pre-Performance Meal
The first thing to say about the pre-performance meal is that it is only one small element of what makes up ideal nutritional preparation for a match or race.
For example, your general level of fitness will be determined by how well you’ve been able to train and get the adaptations from your training - both of which are significantly influenced by your nutrition in the weeks and months before an event.
Your body composition going into that game, similarly, depends on your ongoing nutrition - no pre-performance meal will take off the extra 5kg that’s leaving you feeling sluggish on the pitch.
Closer to the event, your fuelling in the day or days leading up to the event will determine your fuel stores leading into event-day. (Check out this article on carb-loading for more on that).
Finally, unless your event is early in the day, you’ll likely be having other meals and snacks before your pre-performance meal.
Given all this, the pre-performance meal can almost be seen as the cherry on top of your nutritional preparation for an event.
However, that’s not to say the pre-performance meal isn’t important.
In fact, if you get it wrong, it could negate all the other nutritional preparation you’ve done - you’ll know this is you’ve ever gone into a match or race with a full stomach, or a completely empty one.
On the other hand, if you’ve done it right, whilst it may make a relatively small difference in the grand scheme of things, that small difference could be the difference between winning and losing, or at least performing to your potential.
The Aims of the Pre-Performance Meal
With the athletes I work with, our aim with the pre-performance meal is to accomplish 4 things:
Increase fuel availability.
Increase hydration levels.
Minimise muscle protein breakdown.
Do the above whilst minimising digestive upset.
I’ll break down how to accomplish each of these elements.
1. Increase Fuel Availability
If you’ve read any of my other articles, listened to my podcast, read my book, or consumed pretty much any of my work, you’ll know by now the importance of carbohydrates when it comes to fuelling high-intensity exercise.
A lot of the fuelling work will be done if you’ve gone through a carb-loading period and/or have a moderately high carbohydrate intake in general.
So whilst you won’t need to rely on the pre-performance period alone for your fuelling, it is an extra opportunity to top-up the glycogen (stored carbohydrate), primarily in the live at this point, whilst also increasing blood glucose levels prior to the performance event.
With that said, somewhere in the range of 1-2g of carbohydrate per kg of bodyweight (e.g. 75-150 g of carbohydrate for a 75 kg athlete) in the pre-performance meal, eaten 2-4 hours beforehand, tends to be a good balance between providing this extra fuel, and not being such a big meal as to feel heavy in the stomach.
Where you fall in this range will depend of various factors including:
The time at which you’re eating the meal relative to the start of the match - You’ll have more time to digest a bigger meal when eating 4 hours beforehand than if you were eating 2 hours beforehand.
How much carbohydrate you've eaten already that day - If the event is in the morning, you’ll need a higher intake to top up glycogen stores than if you have an evening event and you’ve been topping them up all day.
How long the event is - If you expect to get more playing time, you’ll need more fuel, and vice versa if you’re expecting to play fewer minutes. For an endurance event, you may even extend intake beyond the 2g/kg B.W. range.
How intense the event is - A low effort football match where the opposition doesn’t have much to offer will likely require less fuel than a competitive championship final or running a half-marathon.
Your digestive tolerance for carbohydrates and food in general - If you know you can’t digest a big meal well, then keeping it smaller will be a good idea. You can potentially address this by trialling different types of food/liquids, increasing the time between the pre-performance meal and the event, and/or ensuring carbohydrate is increased leading up to the pre-performance meal.
Your ongoing nutrition relative to your body composition goals - Someone in a fat-loss phase who is therefore going to be lower in ongoing fuel stores) may benefit more from a bigger pre-performance meal to make up for this, and someone in a muscle gain phase (who is therefore going to having higher ongoing fuel stores) may not have the same need to increase glycogen storage through the pre-performance meal.
2. Increase Hydration Levels
Similarly to carbohydrates, adequate hydration in the days leading up to performance day should put you in a good place coming into it, but given that fluids and electrolytes are consistently being excreted throughout the day (through sweating and urination, for example), topping up those levels leading up to the match will be important.
This is particularly the case if the match or event is in the morning, where hydration levels are likely to be lower after having slept for hours overnight without consuming liquids.
It’s also important because we know that athletes find it difficult to drink sufficient fluids to replace the fluids they’re losing through sweat during the match, so getting ahead of that by increasing fluid intake before the match can be a good idea.
I usually advise athletes to consume about 500ml of fluids alongside their pre-match meal based on this, allowing them to top up fluid levels in the body, but still avoiding drinking so much as to feel heavy in the stomach.
After that, continuing to “drink to thirst” in between the pre-performance meal and the event is a good idea.
Having salt in your pre-performance meal and/or providing electrolytes through supplemental electrolytes added to your water can also be useful, since this can increase blood volume, and increase the retention of fluids consumed during this period, whilst also potentially accounting for some of the sodium losses seen during the event.
These hydration recommendations may change and need to be more precise for endurance events for example, but for most team sports (GAA, football, hurling, rugby, etc.) these recommendations are sufficient, and to go beyond them would unnecessarily complicate things. (You can find more on hydration in this article).
3. Minimise Muscle Breakdown
During high-intensity activities and sport, as mentioned, the main fuel will be carbohydrate, and to a lesser extent, fat will also contribute.
However, muscle protein can also be broken down and used as fuel.
As you can imagine, in an ideal world, this is not what we’d want.
Excessive muscle protein breakdown (when not offset sufficient by muscle protein synthesis) can lead to a decrease in your hard-earned muscle mass, which is usually neither good for your confidence nor your performance goals.
It can, in theory, also increase the recovery demand on the other side of the event - the more muscle is broken down or damaged, the more that needs to be repaired.
And whilst we can’t reduce muscle protein breakdown during exercise to zero, we can do some things to help minimise it.
The first aspect is what we’ve covered already, which is ensuring adequate fuelling going into the event.
Having adequate carbohydrate (glycogen) stored in the body, and potentially providing it during the event can mean the body will have to rely less on protein as a fuel source.
We can also minimise protein breakdown by including protein within the pre-performance meal.
Doing so will mean that there will be readily available amino acids (the broken down form of protein) in the bloodstream during the event.
This, at least in theory, could mean the body will have less need to acquire these amino acids through the breakdown of muscle tissue.
Aside from sparing muscle tissue, supplying amino acids via protein intake could potentially benefit performance during the event because of their involvement in improving hydration and in the synthesis of certain neurotransmitters.
Supplying somewhere in the range of 25-50g of protein in the pre-performance meal, similarly to most other meals, is a good place to aim for in order to satisfy these goals.
4. Do the Above Whilst Minimising Digestive Upset
All the recommendations above mean very little if you’re bending over with stomach cramps during a race or having to run off the pitch to the toilet in the middle of a match.
For that reason, achieving the previous goals whilst minimising digestive upset is key.
This can be done by addressing three key things:
The size of the meal: The above recommendations regarding carbohydrate and protein amounts will help achieve this, but some trial and error will be needed in order to find what size of meal allows you to not feel full but also not feel hungry going into and during the performance event.
The timing of the meal: This will also be based on your own preference and experience, as well as your schedule, but generally eating your last meal within 2-4 hours before the event is a good place to start, giving you time to digest the meal, but not so long as to feel hungry again.
A snack can be added (e.g. rice cakes, toast, fruit (dried or fresh), oat bars) in the hour or two before the event if there’s a long delay between the pre-performance meal and the event - more on that below.
The content of the meal: The meal should be relatively low in fat and fibre, since these tend to take longer to digest, and can therefore lead to a feeling of heaviness in the stomach and a delay in getting the appropriate nutrients (carbs and protein) through the digestive system - They don’t need to be avoided completely but shouldn’t be consumed in excess.
Pre-Performance Meal examples:
I’ve provided some examples of what a pre-performance meal might look like below.
I’ve purposely avoided including amounts, since as discussed above, the amount will vary widely for each individual.
For this reason, I’d recommend tracking any pre-performance meal you’re consuming through an app like Myfitnesspal or Cronometer ahead of time to ensure appropriate amounts of the elements mentioned above.
Chicken with rice and peas.
Oats and whey protein with fruit.
Potatoes and turkey mince with a handful of berries
Sweet potato with lean beef with rocket leaves
Pasta with chicken and tomato sauce.
Bagels with banana and honey, and a protein shake.
All of these meals should be seasoned to taste for enjoyment and the previously mentioned hydration benefits of salt.
The Pre-Performance Hour
In the 0–60 minutes before the event, which may be before, during, or after the warm-up phase, you may want to take advantage of the chance to get some extra fuel and fluids into the system.
This can be done through a drink, gel, and/or snacks like jelly sweets, for example.
Taking this a step further by including specific supplements at this point can be an option too (e.g. Caffiene).
Examples of the type of drinks/snacks/supplements that can be beneficial in this context is discussed in this article on Intra-Performance Nutrition.
In general, a drink containing 400–700g of water, 30-60 grams of fast-digesting carbohydrates, half a teaspoon of salt or an electrolyte tablet, and some flavouring, or a gel or snack that provides similar amounts, can be advantageous to consume, in the 0–60 minute period before the event or other performance event (as well as throughout the and/or at halftime/breaks).
You can include the ingredient consumed here as part contributing to the previously discussed macronutrient targets.
This is a similar makeup as a shop-bought sports drink, so if you don’t want to put together your own, sipping on a sports drink in the lead-up to the match or other performance event, or having a glucose gel during the warm-up and/or at halftime can be a good strategy.
Your Pre-Performance Checklist:
Good ongoing nutrition.
Plenty of carbohydrate and water in the days leading up to performance day, potentially to the point of carb-loading.
Pre-performance meal containing 1-2g/kg B.W. of carbohydrates, 25-50g protein, salt, with minimal fat and fibre.
Avoid foods that you find hard to digest in the pre-performance meal.
Eat at a time that allows you to feel neither hungry nor overly full during the event.
Consider a drink or snack containing some quick-digesting carbohydrates and some salt/electrolytes within the hour pre-performance.
Consider supplementing with caffeine and other potential supplements within the hour pre-match for a cognitive and physiological boost.
Article Written By Conor O’Neill
P.s. You can find out more about Performance Nutrition Coaching HERE.