Can Nutrition Improve Your Headspace, Especially Before a Game?

As soccer mentors, we meet a lot of young athletes who thrive in practice but struggle to perform in matches. In many cases, it’s because they don’t go into the match feeling relaxed and focused. Instead, they go into the match feeling mentally exhausted. This impedes their ability to make decisions, take risks, and consistently put themselves in positions to support their team.

Fortunately, there are a number of solutions to this widespread issue, and one of the easiest to implement is highly overlooked, especially by young athletes.

We’re talking about nutrition.

A young athlete might be surprised to learn that what they eat and drink has a direct impact on their mental state. By following the basic fundamentals of nutrition and hydration, athletes can put their minds at ease at the perfect time, like right before a match.

How Nutrition Affects Your Confidence

Nutrition gives us energy, and the mind needs energy to perform. When you have a full tank of energy, your mind feels primed and ready to perform, which makes you feel confident. When you’re low on energy, your body is under stress and your mind does not function at 100%. You don’t feel confident or capable of performing because your mind is already tired, and the match hasn’t even started.

Feeling good is a necessary prerequisite for feeling confident, which is key for feeling focused and relaxed in matches. In our experience, what makes players feel nervous or anxious before matches is a lack of confidence in their own abilities. What they’re really feeling, however, is a lack of energy, and that’s where nutrition comes into play.

It’s Not Just What You Eat, It’s WHEN You Eat

It takes time for food to be converted into energy. The food you eat the night before the match is what mostly determines how much energy you have early on the next day. Carbs give you energy, right? So, it makes sense to eat a carb-heavy meal the night before your match, as opposed to the day of the match. This gives your body all the time it needs to convert the meal into energy. When the match starts, you’ll have an entire meal’s worth of energy flowing through your system.

Hydration works a bit differently. Your body needs at least an hour to process all the water inside of it. So, when it’s not 95-100º out, it makes sense to stop drinking water an hour before the match, since anything else won’t get processed and boost your energy levels. Of course, the hotter it is, the more water you need to be drinking as you’ll be sweating it out faster (so don’t stop drinking water when you’re playing in the heat!).

As you can see, accessing the energy-boosting benefits of nutrition and hydration really depends on WHEN you eat and drink, along with what you put into your body. That’s why when players ask us if nutrition can improve their headspace before a match, our answer is always, “Yes, but only if you eat at the right time.”

Timing Your Meals Like a Professional

Since the food you eat the night before a match has such a big impact on performance, this meal should become an integral part of your pre-game routine. If you eat a carb-heavy meal like pasta the night before every match, you’ll have a full tank of energy, and the confidence that comes with it.

At Beyond Goals Mentoring, we help young athletes build routines to ensure they feel relaxed and focused in high-pressure situations. Following a pre-game routine - instead of continuously making decisions throughout the day - allows an athlete’s mind to rest until it’s time to perform. When the match starts, they’ll feel fresh as a daisy, ready to make decisions and battle through whatever is in front of them. 

So, if your athlete is struggling with pre-game anxiety, let’s set up a mentoring session and start building a routine for their next match.