Softball Coaching Tips – Softball Nutrition Tips for Coaches

As a coach, I’m pretty sure you know and appreciate the importance of nutrition to your players. The right nutrition provides them with fuel to help them get through games, recover quickly from fatigue, and helps them stay mentally sharp throughout the game.

However, I’m also quite sure that most coaches are fumbling for information on how to teach your players the importance of good nutrition. You know that are carbohydrates are important, but what are good sources of this?

Don’t worry though, because I’ll walk you through some of the basic and most important information you can get about softball nutrition. And I hope that you apply these concepts to how you handle your players so they can perform better on the field.

Here they are:

Players Typically Need to Consume More Calories

This is one thing that players usually miss out on when it comes to their own personal nutrition. A lot of elite players don’t consume enough calories to fuel them during the game and when doing their normal daily activities.

There was one time when I came across a female basketball player in one of my nutrition classes who required a daily caloric expenditure of 4000 calories because of her height (she’s 6’3”) and because she’s an active elite athlete.

But during our analysis of her calorie intake, I discovered that she was only consuming 2600 on average for the week we analyzed. That gave her a calorie deficit of 1400 calories.

I talked to her and found out that she often felt tired and had a hard time focusing in class.

So make sure you let your players consume enough calories everyday so that they can perform well on and off the field.

Sports Drinks vs. Energy Drinks

Today, there are a wide variety of sports and energy drinks that both promise to help your players boost their performance. But which of the two should you choose?

I strongly recommend that you let your players drink sports drinks instead of energy drinks. Why? Because sports drinks provide your players bodies not only with an energy boost, but it also keeps them well-hydrated which is important if you’re playing during an especially weather.

Meanwhile, energy drinks only give a temporary boost in your players’ reaction and don’t provide anything else as a benefit.

Eat Healthy

I know I shouldn’t state the obvious, but sometimes the obvious things are the ones that we miss. So always remind your players to eat healthy. That means no to hotdog sandwiches, fries, burgers, etc. which are easily available especially during competitions.

Instead, give them healthy food options such as raw almonds, walnuts, pecans, vegetable sticks (without that sinful dip, of course), hard boiled eggs, etc.

Let me summarize everything I discussed on this article. When it comes to maintaining your players’ health, always remember that they typically require more calories than normal individuals, they should drink sports drinks instead of energy drinks (but of course, nothing will ever beat water when it comes to keeping your team well-hydrated) and remind them to eat healthy.

I hope these simple tips will help you develop your softball players into healthier individuals to help them perform better not only on the field but also in their daily, non-softball-related activities.