Olympians, Training, & You
Written by: Dr. Marcia Whalen
Not only am I lucky enough to be able to practice medicine the way it should be, with dedicated time and personal relationships with all of my patients, I’m also fortunate enough to have served as the Head Team Physician for USA Water Polo for the past couple of years. This is an incredibly rewarding role and I couldn’t be more honored to join them on their exciting journey to the 2012 Olympics in London, England. My plan is to use our new web platform to share this exciting journey, as well as to use this opportunity to educate people on what is really required from a health, fitness, and nutritional perspective to be a professional athlete.
I recently returned from Christchurch, New Zealand where I was on a trip with the gold medal winners USA women’s senior water polo team for the FINA World Cup championship. It was the first time since 1979 that the USA has won this championship. Needless to say, it was one of the most exciting wins I have seen with this team!
As a team physician, a successful trip usually means no trips to the emergency room in a foreign country, air evacuations back to the states or team flu epidemics! This indeed was a successful trip for me as well. Yet, it was so much more. The winning team was a mix of veterans like Brenda Villa who already holds 2 Olympic medals and 17 year old high school senior Maggie Steffens whose older sister, Jessica, is also on the team but had to stay home to recover from an injury. It was a team that had only been together for a few months and in the end, they pulled off a huge win!!!! I’m not just saying that because they beat the Australian team 6-3 in the final game. (for those of you who know I am married to an Aussie, you understand the extreme joy in this for me!) If you are not familliar with the amazing growth of this sport, please check out Greg Mescal’s recent article .
As there were few medical issues for me to deal with on this trip, it allowed me to focus on different aspects of traveling with elite athletes during a world competition. Nutrition for these women is so important, especially with a practice and a game every day and even two games in one day! What they eat and when they eat became critically important for their peak performance.
What you eat greatly determines how hard and how long the body can perform at a high level and can be the difference between a silver and gold medal.
As a personal physician, I spend a lot of time discussing this with my patients. The importance of what and when you eat is not only important for elite athletes to achieve optimal performance but also for me and my patients and our quest to achieve optimal health. I use the same basic principles from my favorite food book Food Rules by Michael Pollan for all of my patients, elite athletes or CEO’s. For example, the importance of eating a proper amount of protein after a strength workout is essential to the repair of injured muscles and build muscles. I encourage “real food” protein instead of protein bars and shakes. This allows you to control how much sugar and fat go in with the protein. In a recent article that I wrote on sports nutrition, I further highlighted some examples of great post exercise snacks and meals.
Whether you are training for a competitive event, or just looking to optimize your workout, nutrition is the most critical element of your program. Studies show that what you eat can be responsible for up to 80% of your results. Fitness and nutrition are critical to long term disease prevention and understanding what to do and how to do it can be very confusing. Join my blog, join me on the US Water Polo journey to the 2012 Olympics in London and together we can work on your quest for health!
