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Nutrition Guide
This Nutrition Guide has been designed to help you plan and prepare nutritious meals for your team during tournaments and travel. Our goals are three fold; 1) to help you decide on nutritious meals for your team, whether they be at a restaurant, catered in, or from the grocery store, 2) to improve efficiency in organizing and ordering food for your team, and 3) to give your team every opportunity to perform at their highest level through eating healthy and eating at the right time!
This manual has been divided into two parts. Part One contains general nutrition information for you, your athletes, and their families. Part Two lists good food choices for breakfasts, lunches, dinners, snacks and sports drinks. Part Two also outlines the optimal timing of meals and snacks (when to eat) and includes a Food Preference Survey.
When considering the nutrition needs of your team, keep the following tips in mind:
• Soccer players are unique in their energy needs. The sport requires both endurance and short bursts of high intensity energy. Their bodies are like engines.... if you put bad fuel in the engine, it won’t run well!!
• The athletes are still growing and are calorie-burning machines. There will be times where they can’t get enough to eat, as well as times where they aren’t very hungry. These athletes need carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Be aware that a low carbohydrate diet IS NOT recommended for them.
• Timing of meals is extremely important. Be conscious of this during planning time. Tournament time is not the time to begin experimenting with your diet. Begin now so you have an idea of which foods work best for you and how long you need to digest them.
Click here for the current Food Guide Pyramid which is a good guideline for how to balance your diet. Use it as a reference. This will help you choose a wide variety of foods from all of the food groups. The pyramid also lists recommended portion sizes to ensure that the athletes are eating the right amounts.
Try to base your nutrition plan on these three important keys to healthy eating:
1. Choose natural or lightly processed foods as often as possible (such as whole grain breads instead of white, deli meats instead of processed luncheon meats, etc.)
2. Choose a wide variety of foods. Eating from all the food groups provides the vitamins and minerals that your body needs for performance.
3. Limit the amount of "junk food" (candy, soda, desserts, sweets, chips, ice cream, etc.) in your diet. Do not consume any junk food near game time or before training.
Click here to see complete manual !
We hope this manual helps you provide the most nutritious foods for your athletes and ensures their success.
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KNOWING YOUR BODY
Below is a list of articles that are geared toward the identification, treatment and prevention of various sports injuries associated with soccer. These supplements are guidelines that should never be used as a replacement for consulting your physician for medical treatment.
Concussion
Knee Injury
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Player Safety
Parents may not realize it, but their soccer-playing kids may be exposed to a hidden danger every time they take the field, a danger that could hurt or even kill.
The Early Show consumer correspondent Susan Koeppen explained that portable soccer goals are inherently top-heavy and can weigh hundreds of pounds. If they're not anchored properly, or at all, they can tip over with relative ease, putting nearby players at risk. The U.S. Soccer Federation says 14 million kids aged 6-17 play the sport in this country, with up to 500,000 goals in use. Soccer goal tip-over accidents kill at least one child every year, and injure 200, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Unlike professional soccer, which uses permanently-anchored goals, youth soccer typically uses goals that are portable and can be moved on and off the field. Schools and parks prefer them because they enable more than one sport to be played on each field.
The CPSC's Julie Vallese told Koeppen, "Everyone who visits a field needs to understand that (soccer goals) are big, they are heavy, and the misconception is that they won't fall over because of that." Soccer goals are sold with anchoring systems, usually sandbags or metal spikes. Under national youth soccer regulations, referees are supposed to check that goals are properly anchored before every game, but no one supervises the refs to make sure that happens. The regulations also say goals should be anchored before e very practice and scrimmage, but that safety measure is often ignored, as well.
And that, advises Koeppen, is key: parents or kids should check goals themselves before games or practices to make sure they're anchored securely. Also, kids shouldn't help move goals, because that leads to many accidents. And kids should never hang from them, since that leads to many tip-overs. Even the wind can cause the goals to tip. The organization responsible for creating voluntary safety standards for soccer goals, the American Society for Testing and Materials, is considering stronger stability standards for new soccer goals. The improved standard would require unanchored goals to stay upright even if two 10-year-olds are hanging off the center crossbar. There's no timetable for when these new standards might be passed.
Koeppen spoke exclusively with the parents of a 10-year-old goalie who lost his life last month when a goal fell onto him. She also chatted with a father and daughter about a similar incident that severely injured the girl's leg. Both families Koeppen visited have other kids who play soccer; they've taught their children to check the goals before they take the field to make sure that the goals are anchored.
To watch Koeppen's full interview and for safety tips, click here .
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