Nutritional strategies to optimize performance, training adaptation and recovery in team sports

Team sports performance is highly demanding in terms of physiological and psychological aspects. Furthermore, the competition schedule is often time constrained and athletes need to travel between games during recovery. Therefore, it seems very important to optimize nutritional strategies around training sessions as well as while traveling or competing. This review discusses a variety of different aspects, which are important in the development of a nutritional strategy in a club. It summarizes how the medical and performance staff of a team can provide the right nutritional strategies to optimize training adaptation and recovery. Furthermore, specific nutritional aspects for female, youth and traveling athletes as well as athletes recovering from injury are discussed. Besides nutritional strategies, teams should be cautious regarding the monitoring of body composition. Choosing the right time point in the season together with selecting a reliable and valid method and measuring under standardized circumstances is essential. Furthermore, athletes need to be educated on the risks and benefits of supplement use. This can reduce the risk of a positive doping test as well as the use of unnecessary, inappropriate and ineffective supplements.