Be ready for your next match

With every sprint and tackle you are stressing your muscles, in effect making your muscles weaker. After training and a match we need to supply our body with the right tools to be able to recover and make our muscles stronger and more efficient. Those tools are quite simply carbohydrate and protein; these provide us with energy to compete in subsequent training sessions and provide the building blocks to recover existing muscle, but also to build new muscle.

Training at 100% week in week out and playing at least once a week places huge demands on our muscles and energy systems making it critical to recover as best you can ready to go again. If you do this you will get the most out of your training and allow your body to adapt to the training you are doing. If protein is not supplied to the body then your muscles will struggle to fully adapt to the physical demands of football, possibly limiting your fitness and footballing potential.

Unfortunately, however, we cannot store protein like carbohydrate and fat. Therefore, the key to reaching your fitness potential is to provide your body with protein throughout the day to continually drip feed your body and muscles. Foods such as poultry, fish and diary are all great sources of protein.

Our body is especially efficient at absorbing carbohydrate and protein in the period immediately after training or a match. Therefore, it becomes especially important to consume approximately 10-20g of protein and 1g of carbohydrate per kg of your own body weight AS SOON AS POSSIBLE after training - this is the equivalent of a Lucozade Sport Recovery Bar, and an isotonic drink such as Lucozade Sport Body Fuel. Jaffa cakes and bananas are other firm favourites as sources of carbohydrates.

- Lucozade Sport Science Team

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