Besonderheiten der Ernährung in Sportarten mit Gewichtsklassen

Abstract

For athletes, nutrition plays an important role in health and performance. It should be considered that sports may vary strongly with respect to work load between training and competition, which influences nutritional needs. Athletes in weight-class sports like judo, wrestling, boxing, lightweight rowing are not allowed to exceed a weight limit at the day of competition. As a consequence, body weight and body composition plays an important role for those athletes. In general, training weight is higher than competition weight. Therefore weight cutting strategies (restricted food and fluid intake) are used by athletes to reduce weight. This might impair health and performance. Athletes and coaches are advised to work with sports dietitians in order to optimize body weight early, and to reduce the risk of chronically low energy intake (low energy availability), which may have negative consequences. Dietary reference values for weight class sports are not readily available. Since energy intake is often very low, emphasis should be laid on an adequate intake of macro- and micronutrient. Based on the dietary situation it should be decided whether micronutrient supplementation is necessary. However, supplements cannot compensate poor food choices. Furthermore, supplementation is connected with health and doping risks.