This guest post was written by Darin Huslander. Darin is a Chicago-based performance coach and nutritionist that specializes in tennis performance nutrition. He’s coached and consulted with a number of pro and NCAA players - optimizing their dietary needs to meet their training and competitive demands. You can learn more about Darin at www.thisisperformance.com or follow him on at https://www.instagram.com/thisisperformance/
This past summer, we saw an influx of tennis players join our fitness programs. Many players simply play tennis during the summer months - so having them join our off-court sessions was a good thing. A typical schedule for these players would see them hitting for about 1.5-2 hours per day and spending another 3-4 days with us in the gym.
While it’s great to see tennis players getting after it in the weight room, we spotted an unwanted trend amongst the group. Fatigue. But not the fatigue you’d normally encounter after 2 hours of tennis or a gruelling match. No, this was more of a general type of fatigue. One that’s typical amongst tennis players (especially juniors) but isn’t always easy to pinpoint why it’s occurring.
Their training loads seemed adequate so we decided to take a look at their nutrition through some very specific food journaling and the commonality we notice was…sub-optimal protein intake. In fact, only 2 out of 15 of these players were getting the minimum required protein amounts for athletes of their statures. With protein being not only a building block for repair and recovery, but also a source of energy (iron and B vitamins), we needed to intervene. Our hunch was that if we could get these intakes up, it may help attenuate these ‘fatigue-like’ symptoms.
Before we look into the specifics of protein (including what to eat and how much), let’s get one thing straight. These players - like most in tennis - were properly taking in fast digesting carbs for their training and matches. But we must keep in mind - that’s their purpose - fast, straight-to-the-bloodstream energy. The magic of protein is what happens after that carb (and more specifically, glucose) supply runs out.
So What Is Protein?
Protein is one of 3 macronutrients that fuel our bodies (fats and carbohydrates being the other 2). They are made up of hydrogen and carbon molecules that, when digested, form into smaller units called amino acids. These amino acids then pass through our bodies and are broken down in the liver. From there, a percentage of them are transported throughout the body for various tasks, including hormone production and regulation, and muscle tissue repair.
With many tennis players averaging 25-30 hours per week - which includes hitting, match play, and strength/power training - having adequate protein is perhaps the most important dietary need for proper recovery and performance.
How Much Do We Need?
The Journal of Sports, Science, and Medicine published an article in 2013 stating that 1.5-1.7g/kg of bodyweight of protein per day (see table below) is a recommended standard for tennis players (1). This is likely due to a combination of the stress, workload, and year-round seasonality of tennis.
What does that mean for a 150 pound (68kg) athlete? Roughly 102-116g of protein per day! Most probably aren’t getting even 3/4 of that amount. We’ll get into an easier way to measure your protein intake below…so keep reading.
What are the Best Sources of Protein?
First, it’s important to establish that everyone has different dietary needs for different reasons, one of which includes sustainability of protein. It often takes more energy and resources to create lean beef than it does with beans.
It’s also important to note that almost all foods contain protein. For instance:
A tablespoon of peanut butter has around 3g of protein.
A medium avocado contains approximately 4g of protein.
A medium baked potato has approximately 4g of protein.
But these foods are not considered protein-dominant sources. In order to hit our required daily amounts, foods considered protein rich, eaten in many varieties, are necessary for protein synthesis and muscle recovery + repair.
Here is a list of foods considered protein-dominant:
Poultry (chicken, turkey, duck)
Lean meat (pork, game meats, beef)
Fish and seafood
Eggs
Certain dairy sources such as cottage cheese and/or plain greek yogurt
Powders such as whey, casein, egg, and vegetarian blends
Beans and legumes
Tempeh and tofu.
Plant Based Diets
For those that prefer a plant based diet, you should make sure of the following when choosing protein rich foods:
Choose a wide variety of beans, legumes, vegetables, and fruits. Often, certain plant based sources do not contain a full array of amino acids, thus keeping a variety helps in achieving this.
Try to include beans and legumes each day (at least 1 cup). Legumes are a rich source of lysine (an amino acid), often hard to find in other plant-based protein sources. We need anywhere from 30-45mg/kg of bodyweight per day (2-4g for a 150lb person) and 1 cup of legumes usually contains about 1g of lysine. Lysine is non-essential, meaning we must get it from food and plays a major role in muscle protein synthesis and recovery. (2)
Avoid processed foods, grains, cereals, and bars to achieve your daily protein needs. These are often lacking in micronutrients (vitamins), and can be very deficient in certain amino acids.
Consider a plant based protein supplement if you find yourself missing your protein needs regularly
Supplementation
First of all, in any diet, real food should take priority. We get more nutrients our body needs from real, whole foods. Yet many athletes struggle to maintain protein intake, in which supplementation may be necessary.
For instance:
It might be hard when you’re traveling for a match and food options are limited.
Cooking whole foods may not be an option when you have short turnaround times for matches.
Students in schools where protein rich options are limited on certain days/times.
In this case, supplementation through powders can assist with hitting your overall daily goal. Powders include:
Whey
Casein
Milk-Based
Egg-Based
Plant-Based
When choosing a supplemental protein look for a protein powder that is typically unsweetened with as few ingredients as possible. You ideally want protein as the first ingredient listed, and the NSF seal, which means it is Certified for Sport and has been tested for supplements and contaminants banned by all major athletic organizations.
How much and how often should I eat protein?
For tennis players, intra-match workout is optimally supplemented with water, a carbohydrate blend, and electrolytes. There is no adequate research that suggests protein supplementation intra-match benefits the athlete on the court.
We recommend protein-dominant meals in what we call Anytime Meals (AT). An AT meal is ideally best eaten 2-3 hours before the first match, hit, or workout of the day and 30 minutes after the last of the day and thereafter. AT meals should be protein dominant and are usually the meals where a majority of our protein intake is met.
For serving sizes, we can look no further than our phone for an example:
For males, we recommend approximately 2 servings of protein-dominant foods per meal.
For females, we recommend 1 per meal.
This difference is largely due to different body compositions and weights of male versus female athletes and how that translates to protein needs (these are just recommendations and may vary depending on body size, training hours etc).
Using a smartphone as a serving size should yield approximately 20-30g of protein per serving. This method is easy as it allows relative comparisons to most sources and takes more complicated methods of food calculation (weighing, measuring) out of the equation.
So if our 150 pound athletes needs 102-116g of protein per day, they'll need to consume about 3-4 AT meals per day. This is a starting point, but should allow most athletes to hit their target protein intake each day following these guidelines.
Male Versus Female Considerations
In addition to general portion sizes, females and males also have another consideration in protein intake: Iron levels. Exercise and heavy sweating cause iron loss up to 70% due to heavy sweating and high intensity performance. Females often tend to lose more due to monthly blood loss through menstruation (3).
Iron-rich protein sources for consideration may include:
Turkey
Legumes
Red Meat
Broccoli
Tofu
Your Protein Cheat Sheet
Here is a summary of everything you need to ensure an adequate, protein-rich diet to maintain a high level of performance and recovery:
• 1.5-1.7g/kg of bodyweight per day is recommended for tennis athletes
• Anytime Meals should be protein rich and should contain 1-2 servings of protein at each meal
• A smartphone is approximately 1 serving and yields between 20-30g of protein
• Males and females have different needs, and females tend to need more iron-rich sources than males
How Long Until I Notice A Difference?
Once we intervened with our tennis athletes, the differences improved both rapidly and dramatically. Each day, we asked them to evaluate their energy and performance as well as their resting heart rate in the morning. The data we used there showed both a lower resting heart rate, and improved feelings of performance during both matches and practice. This was all within their first week of adequate intake!
We also noticed monumental strength increases in their gym performance as well. We had two taller athletes who came to us with early arthritic symptoms in their joints due to a combination of wear and tear from their intense schedules as well as their respective heights. Increasing protein intake also dramatically reduced how often their joints ached, most likely due to improved recovery and tissue repair that the protein intake assisted with.
What Should I Do Next?
First, consider writing down a daily food journal. This will allow you to see how much you’re getting. You can also use one of the many free apps that exist as well. They will give you an idea of how much protein you are getting each day.
Second, calculate where you should be at (using the minimum numbers) and compare it to where you are currently at.
If you determine you are low on protein, evaluate your daily food intake and find time where you can to create your AT (anytime) meals. Those are your biggest opportunities for protein rich meals.
We always recommend starting small. If you are very low, consider 1-2 “smartphones” of protein at each of those meals and once you adjust, add more if needed to hit your numbers.
And the biggest consideration: pay attention to your energy levels!! Rate yourself from 1-10 or 1-5 on how much energy you have during each practice, each day. Rate your sleep, rate your overall daily performance. The more of this type of data you can collect consistently, the better.
Once you adjust your intake, continue to monitor this for a week or two and look for improvements. Then you are well on your way.
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Sources:
Ranchordas, Mayur K et al. “Nutrition for tennis: practical recommendations.” Journal of sports science & medicine vol. 12,2 211-24. 1 Jun. 2013
Berardi, John, et al. Essentials of Sport and Exercise Nutrition. 3rd ed., Precision Nutrition, 2017.
Hinton, PS. Iron and the Endurance Athlete. App Physiol Nutri Metab. 2014 May: 39: 1012-1018.