Football Champions on a Low-Carb Diet
The Norwegian low-carbohydrate team Strømsgodset have won the league cup for the first time since 1970. Kenn Hallstensen, responsible for the team’s diet, makes sure they eat a restricted amount of carbohydrate (Google translated from Norwegian).
The advantages of a low-carb diet in sports are a lower fat mass (desirable in most sports) and a higher fat-burning capacity coupled with higher endurance (especially useful when matches last longer than 1 hour). Reports state that Strømsgodset steamrolled their opponents during the final 45 minutes.
A very strict low-carbohydrate diet may however reduce explosive strength, which is why a more liberal low-carb diet may often be preferable for optimal performance.
Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet: Strømsgodset Played Their Way to Championship Gold After a Dream Game Against FKH (again, Google translated from Norwegian).
Earlier posts
Even Elite Gymnasts Do Fine Without Carbs
Four Simple Steps to a Healthier and Leaner Life
Even Tour de France Cyclists Avoid Carbs to Stay Lean
All Posts on Low-Carb and Exercise
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Just joking of course :-) Altho' now I think on it, we might also need to discuss the "World" series in baseball... :-P
Seriously though, it is encouraging to see the increasing recognition of LCHF in the mainstream. Professional football teams are not interested in fads but in success.. they make it their business to figure out what works best. Interesting to note their sustained stamina late into the game.
SuperStarch would help with this, most likely...
So eathing LCHF during training and offtime, and loading up with carbs before the match,
to get enough power for anaeorobic bursts.
Also I am by no means an "athlete" and have not read much by those LCHF specialists who advise athletes.
On the other hand I do go for very long hikes and am impressed by how much stamina I now have, even without meals, as compared to when I was on the carb "roller-coaster".
That said I'm confused about "carb loading" as I thought this was the traditional approach of marathon runners (for example) that ultimately seems to lead to "bonking" or "hitting the wall" when the glycogen stores are depleted and the body has not adapted to fat burning? Wouldn't carb loading these football players tip them out of fat burning (ketosis) and not give them the long-term stamina, of which they speak in the article?
my incomplete understanding is that when you carb load the body stores and uses it only for bursts and relies still on fatty acids for the rest of the time as it has been primed to act in this way.
this way you use the eternal energy source of fat for the bulk of the match and only dig into glycogen when the sprints,dashes and similar are performed and it is really necessary.
a carb athlete otherwise would use carb based energy all the time and could bonk early due to this. in theory anyway
Hmmm. Even Phiney admitted, in his famous bicyclists study, that a very strict low-carbohydrate diet REDUCED explosive strength, needed by football players to outrun the defenders and unleash an explosive kick or header past the goalie.
The article did not define how low carb the athletes' diet was. Low compared to what? to the East African long distance runners that dominate distance events and consume 1,000 grams of carbs daily?
Were the football players on the LCHF diet advocated here? If not, then the article is meaningless.
And I'm sure Chelsea, Real Madrid and other world top flight football teams, that consume high carbohydrate diets, are not afraid of these guys.
Article (Google translated) says... " The dietician is the man behind the controversial fat diet or low carbohydrate diet, which in short is about consuming more fat and less carbohydrates in each meal. The recipe is a lot of vegetables and fruits. And fat. Less pasta, cereal, juice and [bread]. Along with training and awareness gives such good results that the big club Chelsea have started thinking along the same lines."
The things you can learn by actually reading eh?!?
Keep sticking your head in the sand Ondrej.. or maybe somewhere else where the sun don't shine :-P
Seems to me your would rather be part of the problem than part of the solution.
Just because they are thinking does not mean they are doing it. Otherwise they would have done it. Furthermore, I'm sure their low carb diet is not the one promoted by the low carb charlatans. It's much higher in carbs.
You need to control your alcohol addiction and come out of the closet.
Let me gues.. could it posibly be lower then FDAs,WHOs and SLVs, 60-50% carbs?
You know.. its this high carb diets that are totaly wrong.. one dont need to bulk on fast acting carbs to make sport activities!
"Athletic ability
The sixth point is that many wish to know how this change might affect their athletic abilities since they have been led to believe, not least by my writings in Lore of Running, that without a high carbohydrate intake they will be unable to exercise properly. What I now understand is that carbohydrates are relatively ineffective fuels for those with CR so that there is no risk that the exercise performance of those with CR will be impaired if they cut their carbohydrate intake as have I. Instead I am certain that the less carbohydrate that those with CR ingest (both in training and in racing), the better they will perform.
My experiment has shown me that I can do any amount of exercise I wish without increasing my carbohydrate intake. (I walk for 6 hours on the mountain and race up to 21km without needing any more the 50-75 grams of carbohydrates a day that is already in my diet). We are currently researching a group of serious and some elite athletes who have adopted the Banting diet and who have found that their performances have improved substantially with weight loss and reduction of their carbohydrate intakes both before and during racing. We need to understand why this is possible.
Not for everyone
However those who can metabolise carbohydrates efficiently and who have always been lean despite eating a high carbohydrate diet may not benefit in any way from this eating plan. I would not advise any athlete who is lean and quite happy with his or her weight and performances to change to this eating plan since it might not make a difference and might even be detrimental.
On the other hand I have noticed that there are a large number of slower finishers in the Argus Cycle Tour and in the Comrades Marathon who are, to put it scientifically, either overweight - body mass index (BMI) greater than 25kg/m2 or frankly obese (BMI greater than 30kg/m2). The point is that the BMI is an excellent proxy for whether or not one is eating the right amount of energy each day. If the BMI is greater than 25kg/m2 in males (somewhat less for females), one is eating more than one should.
For there is also evidence that, within reason, the less one eats, the more likely it is that one will stay healthy for longer. Which raises the question: Why do those with BMIs greater than 25kg/m2 continue to eat too much even if they are exercising enough to compete in the Argus and the Comrades? The answer in my case was clear. It was not that I was gluttonous or lazy – the more usual explanation. It was because my brain was receiving false signals – based on my CR and the addictive effect of carbohydrates - about how much I really needed to eat. Once I corrected the signalling to my brain by adopting a high fat, low carbohydrate diet, I lost the urge to overeat.
http://www.health24.com/Diet-and-nutrition/Nutrition-basics/Tim-Noake...
The Aussies (Australians) are different again - they play Aussie Rules (a form of rugby) with no holes barred.
+1 I especially like his discussion of calculating glycogen deficit for specific activities. Attia espouses a nutritional ketosis (NK) regimen, but does not view the state as optimal for the high-output activities he engages in. He also simply enjoys eating carbs now & then. Yet blindly loading up on them kicks him out of NK, and it takes a long time to recover from that lapse.
So instead, using respiratory quotient (RQ) as a marker for glycogen depletion, he's come up with a way of calculating his carb requirement for a specific workout and tailoring the composition of adjacent meals so that he can enjoy glycogen-fueled training without interrupting his NK. Fascinating stuff.
http://eatingacademy.com/sports-and-nutrition/ketones-carbohydrates-c...