Preparing For A Tournament With Kyle Paredes
Q: I entered a multi-day tournament. How should my training change (if at all) to prepare?
A: Interestingly, people often take an approach of training too much, they often believe that they need to train extra to be best prepared.
However, the week leading up to a tournament can create issues that would make participating in the tournament even worse. For example, doing more training, athletes can often strain muscles that will hinder optimal performance.
My suggestion is:
a) Identify the exact dates of your tournament
b) Start 2 weeks out:
1) tapering of game play and focus more on specific drills or skill sets that need to be polished up.
2) you want to reduce game play because that's when most injuries occur.
3) if you have any nagging strains or injuries this allows your body time to recover.
4) this focus shift also forces you to spend time on specific needs in your game.
c) 1 week out:
1) you need to now focus on, your sleep, hydration, nutrition.
2) In general, it takes 3-4 days for your body to recover from sleep deprivation, dehydration, nutrition reset.
3) this is where you can now focus on light stretching, massages, jacuzzi, steam room, etc., everything that you can do to help circulation and healing.
Q: My friend started cramping up in a past tournament. Should I be changing my diet or nutrition in advance of the tournament?
A: Continuing off the first question, hydration vs. dehydration, one must understand how to identify ones hydration needs.
It's fairly simple actually, we all use the restroom and you can monitor what's going on internally by the color and volume of your urine. When you are fully hydrated, your urine will lean towards the clear side of color. The more stress your body is going through and the more water loss you have, the darker your urine will be.
So your goal should be to get your urine color towards the clear side as much as possible. Hydration requires several facets in order to be in place for the body to hold on and absorb the water. You need to make sure your fluid consumption has electrolytes (sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium).
It is important that you do not drink bottled water that are filtered through a process called reverse osmosis, basically 90% of all bottled water. This type of water is actually stripped of all electrolytes during the process of filtering and sterilizing.
Often times people drink bottled water during sports performances depleting their bodies electrolytes bringing them closer to that muscle cramping environment. On top of that, the old idea of why people carbo loaded without truly understanding that the carbohydrates is actually helping you to maximize your hydration. Complex carbohydrates like to hold on to water.
Q: So what do we drink?
a) alkaline water or alkaline ionized water
b) sports drink low in sugar content
c) bottle water with electrolyte packet to fortify it
d) Hawaiian tap water
e) make sure to eat complex carbs (poi, brown rice, sweet potato, fruits)
Q: A bunch of us are traveling to Japan to play in a tournament. We’ll have to adjust to the time change as well as the weather (outdoors in December, mid-50’s). Are there things we can do to ensure we play at our best?
A: The good news about the time change going to Japan is we are actually gaining five hours, so this should not be an issue. However, the temperature change will be an issue.
In sports performance, the most important regulators of temperature are your head, hands and feet.
So, if you are not good in the cold, make sure these three zones are well covered.
Q: Any other tips or advice for preparing to play in a tournament?
A: On the nutrition and diet front, you will want to avoid or reduce the consumption of processed foods and/or foods cooked with seed oils like canola, corn, soybean, sunflower, safflower, cottonseed, grapeseed and rice bran.
They are unstable and break down quickly when exposed to heat and chemical stress.
The refining process removes antioxidants and exposes polyunsaturated fatty acids to heat, metals and bleaching agents, which can make them quite toxic.
More importantly, these types of oils and processed foods directly slows down your digestion process creating extra stress on the body, which is not needed during sports performance.
Meet the Pro
Kyle Paredes, B.A., ACSM-EP, has served the community as an exercise and sports physiologist for over 25 years, and is the pioneer of Corporate wellness in Honolulu. He’s a PPR Certified Pickleball Pro, an Engage Pickleball Athlete, and previously served as the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Hawaii Pacific University and St. Louis School. He’s also the President and Founder of Sportech-USA (sports performance training) and the owner of the Arsenal FC Hawaii soccer club and Team Chillaxin’.
