Travel

Whether traveling for pleasure or competition, serious athletes should try to maintain a regular training and eating regimen. Regardless of where in the world athletes find themselves, it is important for them to follow certain key principles that will help them adapt more quickly to their new environments, reduce the nutrition stresses associated with eating in a non familiar setting, and adjust their circadian rhythms to the local time zone. Only a few scientific studies have addressed this issue, but there are many well-tested practical strategies that athletes can follow to avoid the performance problems associated with jet lag, food intolerance, consumption of unsafe diarrhea-causing foods, and dehydration. We will focus on useful strategies for reducing the potentially negative impact of travel on performance.

Serious athletes inevitably find themselves competing away from home, often in locations with unfamiliar foods. Regardless of how far away athletes travel, planning ahead is essential to ensure final performance matches trained capabilities. Sadly, few athletes and their coaches take the necessary steps to minimize the negative physical and psychological impact of traveling long distances. Perhaps it is because many athletes and coaches believe that home advantage consists of nonmodifiable factors, and the impact of travel is relatively unimportant compared with site familiarity and officials' bias.¹ Others believe, however, that part of the home court advantage includes the impact of travel, particularly if the team or individual athletes must cross multiple time zones without sufficient time to adapt.²

Creating a plan that ensures the availability of the right kinds of foods and fluids at the right time is critical when competing at home, and it is no less critical when competing away from home. Perhaps the biggest mistake athletes can make when traveling to a competition is to assume that what they need to eat and drink will be there waiting for them. No such assumption should be made. If an athlete doesn't take care of his or her own training and eating plan, no one else will either. Of course, an inadequate knowledge of nutrition makes it impossible for athletes to make the correct dietary choices, particularly if presented with new foods in a new environment. There is no single perfect food that will guarantee an optimal athletic performance, but athletes must know the basic elements of the best foods and fluids to consume.

Both food and adaptation are important considerations. It takes time for an athlete's circadian rhythms to adapt to a new location, so adequate time at the new location is required for these adaptive changes to take place. The desynchronisation of an athlete's normal rhythms results in malaise, loss of appetite, fatigue, and disturbed sleep, all of which can affect performance.³ The severity of these effects depends, to a large degree, on the number of time zones crossed, the direction of the flight, the age of the athlete, and the steps taken by the athlete before travel to minimize the disruption in normal rhythm.^1,4 Even a relatively brief air travel that crosses only two time zones can negatively affect team performance.⁵ This clearly suggests that, when possible, athletes should arrive at the competition early enough for their circadian rhythms to return to normal before the competition begins.⁶ Each athlete has a different capacity to adapt to a new location. Therefore, to the greatest degree possible, the adaptive strategy should be individualized.⁷ Studies assessing the impact of jet lag on members of the U.S. women's soccer team traveling to Taiwan, North American students traveling to Western Europe, and European students traveling to North America found that mood state, anaerobic power and capacity, and dynamic strength were all negatively affected. It took 3 or 4 days to eliminate the impact of travel on these performance measures.⁸

Some athletes consider massage or chiropractic adjustment a critical component of a speedy adaptation. However, there is limited evidence that this approach is truly useful. One study of Finnish junior elite athletes investigated whether the impact of jet lag could be reduced with chiropractic adjustment after a trip. Looking at sleep patterns and mood score (via the Profile of Mood States instrument), it was found that the chiropractic care had no impact on the effects of jet lag.⁹

Acclimatization is particularly important for athletes traveling to locations that are hotter and more humid than where training normally occurs. Physiological adjustments to heat take 7 to 14 days, and without adequate heat adaptation, performance will clearly be affected. Planning ahead to ensure optimal access to the right foods and fluids and to allow for sufficient adaptation time is the key to success.

Travel must also be considered a time of increased disease risk. The traveling athlete may be exposed to unfamiliar pathogens (i.e., those for which the body has yet to develop protective systems); and the lack of sleep, increased mental stress, and increased fatigue associated with travel may increase the chance of infection. Strategizing for how to rest and eat properly before, during, and immediately after a trip is a critical component of staying healthy and reducing the risk that a disease state compromises athletic performance.¹⁰ Maintaining personal hygiene and washing the hands frequently can reduce the risk of infection- these habits should become a regular component of the traveling athlete's strategy for keeping healthy.¹¹

General Guidelines for Eating on the Road

Minimizing Jet Lag

Travel Location