Serious sportspeople know what it is to push the envelope, to feel the pleasantly excruciating pain of trying harder than ever before, to break the line and be the best. They also know that hard training and plenty of good food go hand in hand. Real sportspeople eat 5 to 6 times a day just to get enough fuel for training and to get through the rest of the day.

How many times have you spotted a famous sportsperson on TV, sporting a banana or two. You’ll catch them on the tennis courts, cycle tours, cricket fields and golf courses of the world. They banana-up before, during and after their ravaging challenges.

As a serious athlete you’d know that the better you eat, the better you feel. Occasional take-aways or treats are fine, but the bulk of the diet needs to be brimming with great fruit, veggies, lean protein foods, high calcium dairy or soy foods and plenty of good quality grains and cereals.

The Australian Institute of Sport and the state based Institutes of Sport all employ sports dietitians to give the best nutrition advice to their sportspeople.

And Australian Bananas also consults with one of Australia’s leading nutritionists when it comes to sharing facts about the health-giving qualities of this incredible fruit.

Glenn Cardwell is the author of several books on nutrition and healthy eating, and has some great advice for serious sportspeople in his latest release, Gold Medal Nutrition (Google it).

He is an award winning professional speaker and has spoken on nutrition throughout Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, India, South Africa, Spain and Britain. He lectures in sports nutrition at Edith Cowan University and has been a long-standing guest lecturer at Curtin University. He was the sports nutrition adviser to the West Coast Eagles (Australian Football League) for 14 years. In 2002, he was very fortunate to accompany Brett Lee, Australian fast bowler, to Chicago to conduct sweat and fitness studies. He is currently the sports dietitian with the Western Force (Rugby Super 14).

Glenn produced two books for the Heart Foundation and has written three independent books, Diet Addiction, Gold Medal Nutrition (4th edition), and the Top Blokes Food Manual.
He frequently appears on TV and radio and the West Australian, Sunday Times, Business Directions and Good Medicine magazine have all featured many of his nutrition articles.

Training without the appropriate diet is like tuning to a formula one racing car and fueling it with low octane fuel. If you want the best performance, you have to use the best fuels. Foods that are high in carbohydrate and low in fat are just perfect. Carbo foods are crucial for topping up the natural fuel used by muscles in exercise.

When a muscle contracts in exercise, it burns the glucose that has been released from the muscle fuel tank called glycogen, a derivative of carbohydrate in food. If meals and snacks before physical activity are low in carbs, the muscles become low in glycogen and run out of energy before the finish. This is sometimes called “hitting the wall”, a feeling of extreme fatigue.

Pasta, bread rolls, steamed rice, mashed potato and fruit are all high carbohydrate foods favoured by sportspeople. Favourite fruit: always bananas. Tennis players eat them between sets, cricketers down them at breaks and cyclists pack them into their shirts or pockets.

The best banana for any athlete is one starting to spot. This is because a lot of the starch has broken down to natural sugars, making it both sweeter and quicker to digest. The sugars can then readily replace the glycogen stores in the muscle and the glucose burned during an event.

It doesn‘t matter what the challenge is, to get a muscle fuel top-up during high intensity exercise, arm yourself with a sports drink, jelly beans or a banana so you don’t fade at the end of your challenge. With so many activities being in the extreme range these days, it’s important to refuel with the right fluids and foods whenever there’s a break in exercise.

Once you’re done, so are your muscle fuels and fluids. Drink up and replace lost fluids and nibble on carbohydrate foods to re-energise the muscles. Bananas are easy and quick to eat, that’s why they’re a hit with sportspeople. But one of the most popular banana shots is a smoothie with its protein and carbs, both important after training or an event.

But there’s a lot more to bananas than just carbs and protein. They’re a great source of vitamin B6, folate, potassium, magnesium and vitamin C, and there’s absolutely no fat.

Bananas. Serious fuel for serious sportspeople.