First of all, I would like to ask all the players one question: Besides love to play badminton, what other reasons do you like about playing this sport?
I can expect the answer that comes out from the mouth of most people will be: for health purposes!
But when I take a look at most of the badminton players about the diet they take, I will feel so worried about them.
Before Playing Badminton
You need to pay some attention to eating before playing badminton. It would be best if you tried not to eat too much or too little. Eating too much is prone to sagging your stomach while eating less will cause hypoglycemia.
The best time for you to replenish energy is half an hour to an hour before playing badminton. What should you be eaten is a staple food that is high in cellulose and low in glycemic.
There are two types of staple foods that you can eat before playing badminton.
1. Small bowl of oatmeal
Many health care professionals and nutritionists highly recommend oatmeal because it is low in calories and high in dietary fiber. You can easily feel fullness by consuming a bowl of oatmeal before the game.
However, nowadays, there is a lot of different oatmeal available on the market. How can you choose the right oatmeal for your consumption?
I would list out some of the criteria where you can use as a reference.
- Don’t choose oatmeal that is too sweet or too milky. The sugar content in this type of oatmeal is more terrible than you think, while the milk you taste tends to come from unhealthy creamer.
- Don’t choose oatmeal that has a delicate taste. This type of oatmeal has very low whole-grain fiber.
- When shop for oats, it is not necessary for you to choose complete oats. The oats that you choose should also be mixed with fragments and pieces of oatmeal. Such oatmeal is more original and less artificially interfered with.
2. Two slices of whole wheat bread
Whole wheat bread is a low-fat carbohydrate food that can provide you with enough energy to play badminton.
When choosing this type of bread, you should buy whole wheat bread with the darkest color and unpalatable type. The more unpalatable, the healthier it is.
Something You Can’t Eat Before Playing Badminton
1. Don’t eat foods with high fat and oily. This is due to oily and fatty foods will stay in your stomach for a long time. This will make you feel full during the game and make you feel slow when playing the game.
2. Don’t think about supplementing energy by eating candies and snacks. For example, Snickers are junk food with high calories, high fat, and high sugar. This will cause your blood sugar to rise sharply and then drop sharply. In some severe cases, it will cause a shock as well.
Replenish water
Drinking water is essential. It is recommended that you drink 150ML to 250ML of drinking water or sports drink before playing badminton.
After Playing Badminton
Don’t sit and rest immediately
Squatting and resting immediately after playing badminton will hinder the blood flow to the lower extremities. This can cause fatigue to your body. In some serious cases, it can cause gravity shock.
The correct way to do this after playing badminton is first to adjust your breathing rhythm. You should keep a deep breath and carry out some simple relaxation exercises.
The exercises that you can do are walking slowly and do some simple stretching. Doing so allows your blood from the limbs to return to the heart, increasing the oxygen in the blood. As a result, it will restore the energy for your body and eliminates fatigue faster.
Don’t drink any cold drink
I see many of the players are drinking cold drinks right after playing badminton. Even though most of them know that it is not healthy for them to drink cold like this, they seem to not care about it so much.
This is actually a bad habit that you should avoid. Because after exercise, the digestive system will remain in a state of inhibition and its digestive function is low.
If you feel thirsty and drink many cold drinks, it is easy to cause diarrhea, abdominal pain, and stomachaches.
Therefore, you need to avoid cold drinks at all after exercising. It would help if you replaced it with warm water instead.
Avoid Drinking Too Much Water
When people are sweating vigorously, their heart and lung function will reach a peak. The heart can be beating at a speed of 150 to 200 times per minute. The blood circulation speed of the human body will accelerate, and the capillaries will expand.
There will be more blood flowing into muscles, joints, and other organs. The amount of blood flowing into the digestive organs, such as the gastrointestinal tract, is relatively small. The blood vessels of the gastrointestinal tract are in a contracted state. The gastrointestinal motility is also weakened, and the secretion of digestive juice is reduced.
If you drink a lot of water at this time, it will cause the stomach to swell. A large amount of water will accumulate in the gastrointestinal tract. This will hinder the movement of the diaphragm and affect breathing. Which will end up prolonging the time of lacking oxygen during the time for oxygen replenishment?
At the same time, it will also lower the concentration of gastric acid and affect digestive function. A large amount of perspiration consumes the salt in the human body. Drinking plenty of water cannot replenish salt and reduce the osmotic pressure of the blood.
This will disturb the balance of water and salt metabolism in the body and affect the body’s normal physiological functions. Water increases the amount of blood circulating, which also increases the burden on the heart. All these will cause the heart does not to get enough rest after exercise. And you may end up getting a series of symptoms and illnesses.
For the mild situation, you may get dizziness, vomiting, hallucinations, abdominal cramps, while for the difficult situation, you may get coma, difficulty breathing, pause breathing, and even death.
The correct way to drink water is to take a small sip to replenish water in your body two or three times. Every time you should take about 150ML to 250ML of water.
Don’t eat immediately
The nerve system of the internal organs of the human body is in a state of inhibition during exercise. At the same time, the blood of the whole body also stays in the organs, in which there is less blood remain in the internal organs. If you are eating right after you finish playing badminton, this will increase the burden on the digestive organs.
Diet Window
Here is the diet window for everyone to practice under the common science:
The timeframe needed to supplement with nutrients after exercise is called the sports diet window. The longer the time after finish the exercise, the smaller the window will become. And it will be completely closed after 2 hours. This means you must supplement the nutrition within 2 hours after playing badminton. Our body can absorb nutrients very fast during the diet window timeframe.
After playing badminton, there are three major nutrients that you need to replenish. They are sugar, protein, and vitamins.
The first nutrient you can get from staple food like oat or rice. After the carbohydrate is digested, it becomes sugar. During exercise, the body will lose a lot of glycogen. So you need to quickly replenish the glycogen consumed so that it won’t exhaust your muscles.
The second nutrient that you need to supplement is protein. When playing badminton, the muscle tissue will get consumed. It would help if you replenished protein in time to repair the consumed muscle tissue.
The third nutrient is vitamins. The recommended post-exercise food is bananas. Bananas can quickly replenish potassium in the body. It can relieve muscle cramps and soreness after exercise. Bananas also enrich with other vitamins and minerals which are needed by our body. Besides, bananas can also increase satiety.
Don’t take a shower after playing badminton
Taking a bath immediately after exercise can cause an insufficient blood supply to the heart and brain. If you were taking a bath right after playing badminton, you would feel dizziness, nausea, body weakness and severely induce other diseases.
Before taking a bath, you have to make sure that your body has completely transitioned from a state of motion to a state of calm. This process can be done by doing the following things:
- Wipe off your sweat.
- Replenishing water(be careful. Don’t drink too much water in one shot, you need to take a small sip at a time).
- Stretch after exercise.
Due to different people’s different physiques, the relaxation process and the time of relaxation can also be different for this calming state. You can observe if your heartbeat and breathing have entered into a stable state, and your body is no longer sweats.
When taking a bath, pay attention to the water temperature. As mentioned above, the water temperature cannot be too high or too low. It is best to use warm water of about 40 degrees.
After bathing, dry your body with a bath towel as soon as possible. Then put on clean and comfortable clothes. Ensure you keep your body warm without catching any cold.
Stop Smoking Habit
In addition to the fact that smoke is doing more harm than good, exercise after smoking can lead to insufficient oxygen supply and chest tightness, wheezing, difficulty breathing, dizziness, and fatigue.
Stop Drinking Habit
Our body needs more water than usual after playing badminton. At this time, drinking will make the body absorb the alcohol into the blood more quickly. This can easily damage the liver, stomach, and other organs.
Suppose you have such a drinking habit every time after playing badminton. You may suffer from fatty liver, cirrhosis, gastritis, stomach ulcers, dementia, and other diseases in the long term.
Drinking beer after exercise also can cause damage to our bodies. The alcohol will increase the uric acid in the blood, which may cause great irritation of the joints and inflammation.
