Hi Everyone,
I want to start by giving a welcome to student-athletes, parents, and coaches here that are eager to find out what we are all about. You may be looking into joining The Cascade League or just searching for answers about how to improve your craft. Either way it’s fine with us! Over the coming months leading up to the start of games for our league, we will provide you with content (blogs, videos, drills, perspectives, etc.) from current college coaches and players that we hope you find useful. We will cover a variety of topics including pitching, hitting, mental game, strength & conditioning, and recovery to name a few - but the topic I will regularly be touching on is nutrition education, specifically for baseball players.
The nutrition world can be quite complex and varies quite a bit from person to person. We will start in more general layman’s terms for those athletes who currently do not have any dietary structure. Then, I will give you an outline of the positives and negatives of some of the different diets that are being implemented these days: (Time-restricted eating, Keto, Paleo, etc.) and whether or not they are functional long-term on an athlete’s training schedule. We all know there are stigmas around baseball players, like eating PB&J’s between double-headers or eating out with meal money on the road for the weekend. We will cover how to better structure our eating habits with limited options and/or funds. Then we will dive into the nitty-gritty for players who already carry and stick to sound and functional diets. Everyone is looking for small adjustments to optimize the way they perform day in and day out, from the weight-room to class to practice to games and so on. Let it be noted that with regards to dietary habits, it is far more important to be consistent with 1/4 of your optimal diet rather than being inconsistent with a near-perfect diet.
I am writing this on the night of Halloween after all the kids have stopped knocking on doors and screaming around the neighborhood. Now all the children have presumably come down off of the biggest sugar rush of the year and are in bed. Athletes have to keep in mind: The body does not know the difference between a holiday and a normal day. It certainly is not meant to handle that drastic of a shift in eating habits from one day to the next. Of course everyone expects to put on some weight over the holiday season, but it is far more important for weight gain/loss to be incremental over a long period of time in order to keep it on or off. Stay tuned - There's much more to come. Troy Rallings Director of Pitching Cascade Collegiate League troybaseball28@gmail.com
