Ask the Chiropractor: Nutrition Tips for Young Athletes

In this episode of 'Ask the Chiropractor,' Dr. Brant Hulsebus explores the critical role of nutrition, hydration, and sleep in optimizing performance and reducing injury risk for young athletes. Joined by coaches Mason and Justin from Movement Fitness, the discussion covers the significance of proper fueling for athletic activities, especially during tournaments. They stress the importance of educating both parents and athletes about nutrition, offering practical advice for ensuring that athletes are prepared for peak performance. An upcoming event at Movement Fitness in Rockford aims to further educate attendees on these crucial topics.

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Transcript

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Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here, and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask the Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford Icehogs. Let's dive into it. Welcome to another edition of ask the chiropractor. Last week. I did a talk about GLP and blood sugar and stuff like that. Many of you came to me, asked me questions about your student athletes. You had questions about my student, does this a sport, this sport, what are some things I should know about my kids? Cause we talked a lot about the adults. Now we were talking about the kids that the teenagers and that's a chiropractor. I don't tend to know everything, but I tend to try to find people who do. So I'm over here today with my friends at movement fitness. You could catch me here every Tuesday and Thursday morning. If I don't work out with your doc. But we wanted to come over here and talk a little bit about it from the people who study this stuff in and out. So introduce coach Mason and coach Justin. And maybe you guys should tell us a little bit. I know you have a big event coming up. Yeah, which we could definitely everyone's invited to come to it. So I want you guys to tell me a little bit about this drive to find this nutrition for kids first, for sure. What led you to look into nutrition for the student athletes? Here's what happened. We have a lot of parents that bring in their athletes and they want us to help them get faster. They want to get stronger, play better for sports. And that's really great. But the second question that always comes is. By the way, can you help my athlete with nutrition? Can you help them understand how important it is for them to eat well on the fuel? And so the answer is yes. And. It started for us a couple years ago. We didn't. We did a quiz for some of our athletes coming in and it was about 130 students that we had that summer. And what we found was just asking some simple questions, did you come in the morning session? Did you drink water before you came here? Did you have anything to eat? If you came from a practice to this training, did you have anything to eat in between. And we have some really good athletes and we have some great parents that are supportive and helpful, but the answers were crazy to us. Like they didn't have any water before they came in and they weren't eating anything. And so they're not fueling themselves for success. And that was a real challenge. And so we actually, I wrote a book about this because I wanted to help just provide a guide point for parents and athletes and even coaches to provide some directions, because what we know is. Nutrition will fuel performance. But it will also help athletes to reduce the risk of injury and also help them in the case that they do get injured to recover better. And that's what coach Mason talks a lot about is helping our athletes to reduce that risk of injury, but also coming back from an injury. Yeah. So when coming back from an injury. Nutrition, hydration and sleep as well are some of the key factors that can really reduce the amount of time and the occurrence of those injuries. So I can turn those two to four week injury. If we're dehydrated, that can turn that into a month long injury. Or even two to three months, so can really affect that timeline of getting back on the field and going affect how many times that were occurring or how many occurrences of those injuries that we're experiencing. And because of that, we just said, We talked to Dr. Bran as a partner of ours. And we're like, look, we want to get more people in to help them understand what's happening. So we put together, we have an event next Tuesday at six 30 here at Fitness five 80 south Perryville road. And our goal is to be a place and provide information for both parents and athletes, because here's what we know. Parents want athletes to eat better. They want them to eat healthier. They want to make sure they're getting their protein and we're hydrating and doing all the things. But what we also know is as well, we have two to three hours or so a week with high school and middle school students. The rest of the time, they're under the control of their parents. And so the challenge is we want to help to make sure the parents know, Hey, this is what we should be feeling with, but also the challenge in the sense of. If there's food in the house, it's probably going to be. So how do we clean up the pantry? Make sure that the choices that we're providing for our athletes are better. So it's not just one way to say, Hey athletes, you need to eat better. We also need to make sure that we're allowing them to have the best options at home as well. And during your presentation. If you're going to lots of different topics like about, you talked about the gasket and that they drank water before they came here to work exercise. Topics like I have, I've read your book obviously is going to be typing. It's correct me if I'm wrong, but if I have a weekend tournament, I know some of these did go away for the weekend. They got two games on Saturday, two games on Sunday and a championship with that. What did we do in between parents ask me that all the time. How do I keep my kids fresh and ready to go? And even even after practice, I know for me, when I played football water was a treat. If we didn't screw up for a half an hour, We were given water and I've worked with USA football that teach coaches. That's not right. No. Hundreds of very important and. We've seen a turnaround that but can you hit a little bit of these topics that we don't have the Talk a little bit about some of these ideas. And so I'm sure. What does it make back? Yeah, absolutely. So there's a lot of things with tournaments, but one thing that we're, I talked through a particular with coach Mason in terms of injuries is how important, not only when we think of training, we think of muscles and how do we help get faster and stronger, but also we're training for tendons and ligaments and things like that. And hydration has a big deal to do with that. Definitely. So our ligaments. They're made two thirds of strictly just water. And then the last third of our ligaments that use that water for the elastic ability. So it's really important for ligament to be elastic because it's not, they don't just snap and no one wants to deal with torn ligaments or tendons or anything like that. Yeah, my father always a scrambling admits attendance like onions. There's lots and lots of layers to them. And when you tear them and you injure them to test people here at torn ligament and they think they have to go get a surgery. No, you just ripped somebody out related to be onion. And just try to grow it back together. And by the time in the office all the time about the importance of making sure that you give the building blocks, that it needs in order to heal. And there's special considerations. Correct. When you're talking about someone that's a teenager that's not done growing yet. Definitely. Yeah. Absolutely. So that's the, that's part of that. Those are things that we don't normally think through, but in terms of. Tournament's and we know that clubs sports has continued to grow, and we know that weekend tournaments are going to happen week long tournaments happen, depending on what age you are. So the challenges is how do we fuel for that? And the goal is there's different factors because we don't know

if we're gonna play at 8: 6:19

00 AM. We don't know if we're going to play at 2:00 PM. We don't know if we're going to play the game an hour after that, or we're going to wait six hours in between. So I outlined this a little bit in the book, but Alan had quite a bit, I should say, but. Trying to provide some options for people to understand what to fuel with. And I think the challenge is for us, when we look at clubs sports, when we're going to these tournaments, if we're trying to compete at a higher level, it's not a vacation. So we need to actually think in advance and go, how can we prepare for what's going to come? Because we don't know where we're going to be. We could be in the middle of Iowa. We could be in Chicago and different places, have different food options. And we don't want to leave it up to chance to where we're going, whether we're going to be able to refuel ourselves or not. So if we're going to go to those tournaments, we want to take them as seriously as possible. Obviously, we still want to have fun, but being prepared and going. We'll just go grab a pizza in between. It's not really going to fuel your daughter or son for their next best performance. So we want to make sure that we prepare them for that. Another thing we know that people struggle with is. If we are playing the ADM game, that means we have to have the kids there by seven. That means they have to get up by six, which means they have to eat something by six 30 and then you're fighting your kids and you go, you know what? There are a number of different ways that we can help to fuel in the morning, rather than just having a full meal or to force them to do something or to have nothing at all. So that's part of the deal is structuring that to think like, how are we actually feeling ourselves and preparing? And if we can do something the night before to help them set themselves up and maybe a snack in the morning, there's different options that we can do with that. Then you're going to try to give them the tips. Like I know a lot of times as a parent, Yeah, you go to these weekends. There's always that one, mom and dad had. Plan every meal. At restaurants that you would never take your kids to at home. Because, it's not the best healthiest choice, but they want to go there to hang out and think it's a fun. But you're thinking about. I got to take care of my kid. And even like you said, breakfast for sure. There's always dead. A like substance and the hotels they serve. Waffles. All of the cereal and stuff like that. But you're going to help us correct with maybe we can bring a cooler. And have some stuff with us and have some alternative choices and how to navigate that. I know also too, the challenge with tournaments is, we faced it and gone through it and the challenges, it also costs a lot, right? So it's another way for us to make sure that we're fueling efficiently, but also not just consistently going out and spending money. And I know there may be times like, Hey, the team's going out for a dinner or going out for a lunch or whatever, and we can work around that. But we also want to make sure that we are prepared the best as possible so that we can help them fuel for performance. But I can also just have money flowing out of our wallets constantly. So there's going to be October. 15 October 15. Six 30 here in Rockford. Yes, sir. And if you want a 10 that you can go to my website, you can go to movement, fitness website, social media pages. I'll put some links after this or wherever you're listening. You're hearing this. And another note I. I'm happy. That's many people outside or Rockford. Listen to my podcasts now. So I'll put links, how to get the book in case you live in Kentucky and you don't feel like driving all the way here. Next October 15th to learn some of this stuff. For sure. I'm gonna make the book available to you too. Coach Mason, any final words? Not only are we preparing for our high peak performance, but we're wanting to leave these athletes not vulnerable when they're out on the field. So that's going to be the key for nutrition and hydration as well. Coach Justin. Absolutely. Look, I think this is a bigger deal and parents know this, but it's going to take time and effort. And so our job is to help to continue to educate. It's not perfection, but we want to continue to put steps in place because what we know is what we're doing now for our athletes, it's going to be a part of their longterm plan. And we want to help to prepare them as best as possible to not just reach for the pantry, to not just go for the fast food place, because it's quick and convenient. We want to make sure that it also helps them to set up patterns and habits in their lives that will allow. Them to fuel themselves for the rest of their lives to be successful. Awesome. If you have any questions or anything you want to ask, you can always leave a comment below wherever you're watching and listening to this. And if you have a question for coach Justin or coach Mason, I promise I'll forward it on, like I said, I'm here two or three times a week doing my thing anyway. We'll be happy to share the information with them and they can get back to you too. Other than that. Thanks for tuning in. Make sure you like it. Subscribe and check out movement fitness. You'll. I'll see the links I do to them all the time. You can find more information about that too. Thanks guys.