| Sports Nutrition
 Your body is your machine. The fuel that runs your machine, is the food you eat. The fuel determines how your body reacts, how you feel, and how fast you are. Elite sprinters stick on a strict diet, which results in body fat percentages dropping below ten percent. Understanding how to decrease body fat, as well as an understanding of the nutritional needs of muscles when training will give you the edge on reaching your potential. Physical training is an important component of reaching your peak performance, but nutrition is just as important.
OPTIMUM PERFORMANCE
Most of you will have experienced what it is like to run out of steam during strenuous exercise, or you are reminded by sore stiff muscles the day after intense training, this is accepted by most athletes as inevitable. Muscles are highly specialized tissues that can enable us to carry out the innumerable functions that are essential to daily life, yet most people don't know about the underlying physiology of the human muscle system. This is because our actions are generated so quickly that we are not aware of the complicated processes behind them. To understand how muscle recovery is key to peak muscle performance during exercise, you should have some background/knowledge about what your muscle needs to work.
Muscle cells require extraordinary amounts of energy to contract especially during exercise. To manufacture energy you need, your body uses an extremely sophisticated metabolic system. Energy is released when your muscles break down carbohydrate, fat and protein. Your body uses these nutrients in specific proportions during exercise depending on the length and intensity of your activity. When you think of food, fuel may be the last thing you think about. Yet what you put into your mouth has an enormous effect on your energy level. Food is fuel, but what's the right kind of fuel? Sports nutrition is a field that addresses the unique nutritional needs of active people.
Proper nutrition means meeting your daily caloric requirements and providing your body with nutrients it needs for the growth, support and repair of tissues. That may sound simple but without some fundamental knowledge, sports nutrition can be a confusing maze of scientific terminology and theory.
Sports nutrition is about maximizing nutrition to achieve optimal sports performance. Plenty of research is being carried out in this area of sports medicine, particularly with supplementation. However it must be realized that sports nutrition is only a small part of the much bigger subject of optimum nutrition. Optimum nutrition can be regarded as the base line of sports nutrition. You need to understand the basics to begin to reap the benefits:
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