Vitamins and Minerals
Importance of Vitamins and Minerals to Sport Performance (5)
- Vitamins and minerals act in metabolic pathways to help generate the energy needed to perform the actions involved in hockey.
- Vitamins and minerals can help to reduce damage associated with high intensity sports like hockey (through antioxidants).
- Research has shown that deficiencies in vitamins and minerals can affect elite athletes and reduce performance.
Vitamin and Mineral Guidlines (For a few)
Considerations
- Most athletes, such as hockey players, have huge caloric demands due to the energy expenditure associated with their sport. To combat this, typical hockey players will eat large caloric meals. Therefore by consuming a well balanced diet high in complex carbohydrates (fruits/vegetables), with moderate protein intake, and low fat intake, these hockey players will meet the guidelines for almost all vitamins and minerals, so they should not be worried about deficiencies! (5)
- Vitamin E however is an exception to this rule. Often Vitamin E is quite hard to obtain in the diet, so supplementation of Vitamin E of 100-150mg/day may be necessary to avoid oxidative damage associated with games and practice, however this has not been shown to improve performance! (5)