I have now been a head coach for four years, and kept over four hundred trainings, and pretty much became an expert in physical training, mental training and alpine skiing training itself. I still feel like I have a lot of room to improve though. I feel like even when I am specialized in developing the physical capabilities required in alpine skiing, nutrition coaching has been my weakness for long. Like I understand the basics of what to eat those are pretty obvious, but on a deeper level that what to eat that it actually improves your physicality instead of stabilizing it has been a bit of a mystery to me. That’s why I selected this book for me to read, so I might gain new knowledge about nutrition and use that information to furthermore develop my athletes.

First thing I properly learned was that you need to start with nutritional needs analysis. Each athlete is an individual, and same nutrition program doesn’t work for anyone, even if the targets would be the same for each athlete. In the book, Campbell says that it is necessary to know the athlete’s current body composition, weight history, diet history and possible current diet. InBody testing with bone density scan and body fat percentage is also necessary when starting to create new nutritional program. These tests are familiar to me, as they have been performed on me and on my athletes as well, but I haven’t ever run those tests by myself. Either way, after all the bottom data has been gathered and analysed, the next step in creating a program can begin by defining the targets.

After the InBody testing, the target needs to be acquired. Do we focus on just cutting the athletes BMI, or gaining muscle mass for example 5%? Do we need long lasting energy for improving cardio, or energy spikes more effective in explosive power output? I’m going to look at this from my side, considering alpine skiing. Our focus mainly is to create maximum power to weight ratio when BMI is over 21 but under 25. Meaning maximum amount of strength but without too much mass, so the BMI stays under 25. According to the book, this target means low calories protein together with healthy casual food, and the amount of eaten calories has to be equal compared to the calories burned.

This book had way too much intel to put to this essay accurately, this essay would otherwise be 3000 words long. But I think I gained an idea on how to create nutrition program to an alpine skiing athlete, which was my goal when I started reading this book. I will try it out almost instantly when we try it with a few of my athletes this autumn. In the book, Campbell offered many different lengths of nutrition programs, and I am going to attempt the one which lasts 6 months and gather data about the effects it may have on the athletes. I believe it may help us to gain even better physical state before upcoming winter.