Recently I had some interest from readers about writing an article about the importance of rest in an athlete's development routine.  As I began writing it, I realized I was just repeating what I had learned from my colleague who comes from a Strength and Athleticism focus and teaches on the subject at the University of Minnesota.  His basis for this information comes from his extensive formal education in the area and from a lot of review of scientific journal articles.  So why should you hear from me instead of getting it from an expert?

-Andy Blaylock

These days, hockey is played year round at youth levels. Come to think of it, most all sports are played year round by the youth of today. I think it’s safe to say that we all know that our kids need to balance training, practicing and competing with adequate rest and balanced nutrition, but for most parents that I meet, how to go about this balancing act remains a mystery.

In this two part series I will discuss how to approach nutrition and rest as it relates to youth hockey players in today's crazy world.

Part I: Nutrition

Firstly, how much should our youth athletes be eating in a day to sustain all of their training, practicing and competing, not to mention homework, social activities, chores and, you know, life? Let me introduce you to a term, your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). I describe the BMR as the number of calories that an individual will burn if they lay in bed for 24 hours, completely motionless. In other words, this is how many calories your body needs in order to just plain live, without taking into account any movement or activity. These calories are used for things like breathing, mental processing, circulating blood, synthesizing proteins to turnover cells and grow muscle, and to keep the immune system functioning. All things that are wildly important in maintaining a healthy body! (find your BMR here). Bottom line when it comes to BMR, never, ever eat less than this number of calories.

Ok, so you’ve calculated your ten year olds BMR and it’s something like 1200 calories, no sweat. My boy definitely eats that much in a day, heck that’s one burrito from chipotle! (seriously). Excellent, as long as your boy is lying in bed motionless all day you should be set… but wait a minute he’s not. Take a look at the schedule of the average hockey playing youth, yikes! Just total up the number of hours spent playing, practicing and competing and you’ll find that your son or daughter is anything but motionless. This leads me to the second term of the day, Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). Your TDEE can be determined by multiplying your BMR by an activity constant (find your TDEE here). In the case of our average ten year old I would guess he’s involved in activity at least six days a week giving him a TDEE of somewhere in the neighborhood of between 2000 and 2400 calories per day.

Excellent, make sure the boy is eating 2400 calories a day and we’re set! But wait, what is one major caloric expenditure that every ten year old is responsible for and has yet to be mentioned? Growth. If you manage to consume your TDEE every day you will maintain your current bodyweight. Think about it, if you burn 2400 calories in a day and you consume 2400 calories in a day, what’s leftover to use to create more of you? In order to grow in size and stature your boy needs an extra 500-1000 calories over their TDEE. Now we’re looking at almost 3500 calories per day! Your job now becomes figuring out how to cram in all of these calories along with these little things called “nutrients” while navigating the hectic schedule that I know you have, because your boy or girl plays hockey! Double yikes.

Now for the part of the article that becomes controversial… How can you, oh woeful parent, accomplish this task, of gorging your child while at the same time feeding him or her only “healthy things”? Simply, you can’t. Most parents that I see approach their child’s diet much like their own, they want to eat fewer calories and more nutrients. Excellent approach, if you aren’t active enough to necessitate enormous amounts of calories, however, this is literally the opposite of what you should do if you are a hockey machine that yearns for massive piles of calories day in and day out. Here’s the approach that I recommend, make sure you get “enough” of the nutritious stuff. Vitamins, minerals and the like operate on a pass fail basis, as long as your little one gets enough, then they pass. You don’t get extra stars for going above and beyond. So make sure that little Johnny eats his broccoli, definitely! But then make sure he washes it down with some extra, maybe tastier, calories to support his hockey habit, and of course do this without becoming too jealous of his ability to eat whatever he wants… Remember the demands placed on a youth athlete are much different than those placed on you, and your diets should reflect that.

Zack Rourk, M.Ed.
Sport and exercise Physiologist
Owner, Perfect World Training
PerfectWorldTraining@gmail.com

One of Minnesota's premier hockey trainers, Andy Blaylock joins the YHH Staff to write about the dynamics of training, both on ice and off.  Andy is the General Manager of Competitive Edge Hockey in St. Louis Park. His content will emphasize the importance of high quality in-season and off-season training. In addition to running his own private clinics and camps, Andy has trained several organizations including Andover, Anoka, Edina, Hutchinson, STMA and Wayzata.

Andy can be reached via email at Andy@compedgehky.com