Game Changers: Nutrition Insights from Coach Kegley

In this episode of the ICA Sports and Fitness Science Council, we dive into the crucial role of nutrition in athletic performance and recovery. Hosted by a seasoned professional, the discussion features Coach Justin Kegley, a certified sports nutritionist and owner of a sports performance and personal training facility in Rockford, Illinois. Coach Kegley shares insights into the daily nutritional needs of athletes, particularly focusing on middle school, high school, and college athletes. He emphasizes the importance of proper fueling, hydration, and portion sizes, while also providing practical tips for managing nutrition on the go. The episode concludes with recommendations for further reading and strategies for maintaining peak performance and quick recovery from injuries.

https://www.amazon.com/High-Performance-Nutrition-High-School-Athletes/dp/B0CPBN9WTQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=P91MWUPWNXBF&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.MikIm73HhCLFC5kQO3vRHwpa212cM4hYYwaHPhK8_0w.Kh8jMCBGT1wIpllQej9sadG8b9kgk5BCILlxMzk491c&dib_tag=se&keywords=justin+kegley&qid=1744661369&sprefix=justin+kegley%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-1

Transcript

0:04

Hi everyone, and welcome to another edition of the ICA Sports and Fitness Science Council. And today we're gonna talk a lot about the science when it comes to fitness and health. A lot of us work with athletes, a lot of us work with the professional athletes. Now I get to work with the A HL hockey team right up here, the ice hogs, and they actually have. Full-time nutritionists that every meal's given to 'em, they come in breakfast is waiting for them, they finish their practice, lunch is there waiting for them, and they actually take a dinner home. It's been neat to watch over the last 21 years how more, much more important nutrition has become in the everyday life and activities long is over the days of pizzas. After the games of be these guys are all professionals. So we don't really have to worry about professional athletes so much, but there are lots of athletes we all take care of every day in our practice, and that would be our teenage athletes. So today I wanted to bring on a good friend of mine, coach Justin Kegley, and he's on, you wanna tell us who you are and why I brought you on. Sure. Well, I appreciate you having me on. First off, it's a, it's real pleasure. But, so I own a sports performance and personal training facility in Rockford, Illinois, and I have, I'm A-C-S-C-S, and I'm also certified through Precision Nutrition. I'm a certified sports nutrition coach, and this is a topic that we spend a lot of time working on with our athletes because we specialize in. Middle school, high school, and we have college athletes that come back in the summer that are constantly looking to take their game to the next level. And while training is fantastic and we continue to push into them, we know that we can only go so far if we're depending on how we're fueling ourselves. And so this is a constant battle for someone that doesn't have meals prepared for them. And we need to work through that to help them to understand how important nutrition is. Yeah, I was, I thought it was quite educational.'cause one of our team doctors for the ice hogs used to work for the Bowls and he was telling us how Derrick Rose blew his knee out and he could never heal until one day they figured out that he'd never learned how to eat. Right. Growing up with a single mom on the south side of Chicago, only one year of college for these guys, and then right into the NBA, his whole locker was. Full of candy and junk food in his car. Junk food wrappers. So the Bulls actually made him hire a full-time nutritionist to take care of all of his meals.'cause I mean, you tell us how important nutrition is when it comes to healing. Well, for sure this is a, this is a big, this is a big issue, right? So we talk about a lot of our athletes, number one, we wanna help them to understand, you know, first off, fundamentally just number one basal metabolic rates. Because athletes don't understand that their body is always working right? It's always their lungs are breathing and their brain is working, and the digestive system's working, but they don't understand that. And then they go out and they put out massive efforts in practice. They're going to do trainings, they're going to practice they're going to do a second sport potentially in the same day. You know, teams youth sports has continued to explode in, pop in popularity, and so I. The challenge is, is our athletes are not eating enough, and so we know that they're at a greater risk of getting injured, and then when they do get injured, not understanding the importance of, hey, increasing your protein intake to help you know, the muscles to start to heal or whatever their injury is. To help them to start to get on the, the path to recovery. And it's just a, it's just a constant battle for us. So this is something we have to continue to push in with them and help them to understand what do meals look like, how do we prioritize, you know, things. For us, we always prioritize a protein first strategy for them to help them understand. The fundamentals. We know that carbohydrates are gonna fuel their system and fuel their energy. And fats as well is gonna help be protective for them. But just getting them to understand basically that you can't just eat the school lunch or go to the vending machine and pick out things because like you said, the pizza, they're not drinking, you know, beer hopefully. But, you know, the pizza aspect of, you know, after a game before was, that's just the way it was. It's like, well, it's a lot of calories. Well, yeah, but. So many of our kids are playing at a high level and they wanna compete at a higher level, but they're not fueling themselves for that. So they leave themselves open to injury. And if they do get hurt, unfortunately they're not gonna recover as fast. I know you and I talked before, you had a great way of telling these kids like how much water to drink. It wasn't by the ounces. You wanna share your measurements with us. Well, so we have, I don't have one with me right now, but we look at this and go, look, everybody's got a Stanley, they have an a Walla water bottle. They have some kind of thing whether, you know, you're drinking, you know, you've got a bottle or something with them. And I could sit there and tell you like, Hey, we want you to drink half your body weight and ounces per day. And, and if you're, if you're playing, you know, we generally aim to tell them to get a hundred ounces at least, because we know that that's gonna cover them for the most part. But we would talk about that and they just kind of stare back at you like I. I, I don't know how much that is. Right? They're like, that doesn't make sense to me. So it's like, good. Okay. You know that Stanley, that you carry around as like a status symbol or the O wallow that's the perfect, you know, color and all that stuff. You go like, look, you need Stanley, the big Stanley is like 40 ounces, right? 36 to 40 ounces. You go like, look. You need to drink three of those throughout the course of the day, right? For the most part. Awas, you're gonna drink three to four of those. You know, if you're drinking just regular, standard old water bottle, you're gonna drink, you know, five of those. So just trying to break it down in simple ways for them to understand and go, look, I. Do it first thing in the morning, right? When you wake up in the morning before anything else goes in your mouth, let's get some water down you. So starting off with that and then giving them simple pictures really helps 'em to understand like, alright, I can do that because I have it throughout the course of the day. You talk a lot too about portion sizes and ideas, especially ideas for them on the road, because we all know on the road's a challenge. Even you have a new product at your place, I thought was quite clever. So you wanna share us some of your tips like when you're on the road. Yeah, so helping, helping kids understand that they're not just, you know, when we look at travel sports right now, they're traveling everywhere, right? And the problem is, number one, let's make sure that's not the mentality of like, this is a vacation. Because if you're doing this every weekend, it's not a vacation. This is a big portion of your life. You know, if you go for the weekend, you're going to, that's gonna be 35% of your week by the time you go Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, I. So helping them understand like portion sizes, you know, so like the palm is gonna be equal to a serving of protein and everybody, you know, we have our palms. And so you go, you look at that and you go, all right, for females it could be one to one and a half, right? So you're looking Yeah, exactly. One to one and a half serving size for a, for a female athlete, one and a half to two, depending on what type of athlete a male is. You know, if you have a, you know, somebody who's an offensive lineman or someone that's bigger, that may be a little bit bigger portion size, but. Overall, helping them understand that that's what that would look like. If you're gonna get a piece of fish, you're gonna get some chicken, you're gonna get some ground beef, whatever it is. least have an idea of how much it is. So that way, you know, if you're consuming enough you know, you talked about for us, you know, we, we have, you know, supplements of products that we believe in here. And one of 'em is first form. They just came out with, well they've had it for a little bit, excuse me, but they're beef sticks, which has about 18 grams of protein per serving. You go look, it's a pretty clean product overall. And so that's something for us to go look. Take something like this with you, right? If you're gonna have a snack that's gonna be a little more complete, and you compare that hopefully with a, with a carbohydrate, and you'll look, I know that we're not able to put together a perfect plan based off of everything that we know about them, but we can help them to educate them, to understand what they need to do so that they're properly fueled, they're recovering after a game, a training, a session and reducing that overall risk of injury. I. How about you? A simple tip for the kids that have multiple games in one day. So I have a game in the morning, I'm gonna have a break, I'm gonna have a game after that. What would a simple game plan, do you think? A general game plan? I know it's, it can't be perfect for everybody, but what would you recommend for that day? I. for sure. So a couple things. Number one I talked to, you know, this is a question we get from parents a lot, right? So they're asking about what they should do, and a lot of them ask number one, because they're beating their heads against the wall because they're like,

Hey Johnny or Susie have a game at 8: 8:15

00 AM and they're fighting me every day because they're not eating something. And you're like, okay, look, here's the deal. Number one an early morning game. We always believe nutrition starts the night before, right? Because what they're doing the day before that, and even technically a couple days before that, is gonna lead them up to what's gonna happen this weekend. the goal is, is how can I make sure that we eat the best meal possible the night before, right? You don't have to do a traditional like carb load where we're really doing a bunch of stuff, but making sure we have a meal that's fully prepared with protein, carbs, and fat. So that's all as best we can to do that because if we can fuel them up there, you could potentially get a small snack in the morning. Whether it's even something as simple as a, as a cliff bar, granola bar, something like that, that we'll get some carbohydrates in 'em to help them fuel. Obviously I would prefer that they have some carbs and some protein before they would go. That's what that we would start with there. So if that's an early morning game, that's kind of the strategy. If it's a later, you know, start at say, you know, maybe 10:00 AM then it's like, look, let's get a breakfast, you know, let's get up seven, eight o'clock. Let's get it. And it will give you enough time to digest before you go into your game. So that's gonna be helpful there in addition to what you ate the night before. And then you look and you go like, all right, we know that they're gonna play at 10 and they're probably gonna come back at one or five or something like that. And go, look, if you have an extended break in between, let's get a meal. Let's get a meal, hopefully, you know, within an hour of that previous game.'cause that's gonna help facilitate recovery better. But if you have a, a, a window where it's like, Hey, we're playing at 10 and we're gonna, it's an hour, hour and a half game. We get done 1130 and we're gonna play again at 1220, then look, let's get a snack, right? So we can get something from an electrolyte perspective. So if you have some kind of drink to refuel there it could be as simple as let's get a chocolate milk into refuel. That would be something that was super helpful. Some pretzels, things like that. And you go again. Nothing perfect, but let's refuel that system so that we can ultimately help them to get ready for the next game. And you know, big picture we've talked about, it's not gonna be perfect, but the goal is, is if we can help educate them on why these things are important longitudinally, we know, like as they're younger, certainly they're gonna run higher from a metabolic burn perspective. But long-term, if we can help to educate them on why these things are important and when they can start to make better decisions as a young adult and into later on into adulthood as well. So while you can't have the perfect meal plan, that's the idea So if I wanna learn more about this and dive, do a deeper dive. And is there like a really good book you'd recommend for like parents or maybe even the athletes themselves that maybe we could find like the link here after the podcast is over? Yeah, I. So I wrote a book called High Performance Nutrition for High School Athletes. And the goal was simply to be a guide for parents, coaches, and athletes to help them understand simply what they can do to fuel themselves for success. So it was designed to go, look, here are the fundamentals of what it is, without boring someone to tears because I. We could write the most technical book possible, but nobody's gonna read it. So the goal is, is here's the high level here, let me help you understand. Let's be a guide. And then actually there's a ton of resources recipes in there that allows 'em to go like, Hey, this is what it would look like. Because we know when we have kids where they're fighting with us, I don't like eggs, I don't want to eat this, I don't want to eat that. And you're like, all right, great. Here's 10 options and if that doesn't work, then we can figure something else out. But you know, at least give them a guide to say, look. If you want to play at your highest level, you have to fuel for it. And if by chance you're hurt, you need to fuel to get back because as much as you want to get back on the field or court, you've gotta make sure your nutrition is on point to help you to get there as soon as possible. I. Fantastic. So we're gonna wrap up this podcast, but I finish every podcast the same question. Do you have any final words that for us, that we left out that I didn't cover? Man, I think the biggest thing is. We talk to, we, we live in the information age, right? So when we talk to kids and we talk to parents, even we assume that they know things. And I think that's part of why I wrote the book, because I wanted it to be something simple, but be a guide. So making sure like. You can never tell them too much what is good for them, right? And how we can do that. And giving them examples and giving them ideas. Because sometimes that's all it needs. Like, oh, I just need a couple eggs and, and I can have some oatmeal or toast or something in the morning. You're like, oh, okay, well I can do that. So I think making sure, like. kids these days, they're not dumb, but they need direction, right? As always. And so the more you can do that, the better off. And as a parent myself, I know that it's always great to have other people to continue to speak into my kids so that they understand the importance of the fundamental things we want them to learn in life. Awesome. Well, I'm gonna put a link to this. Wherever you're watching or listening to this, you'll be able to get a copy of this book and check it out for yourself. I've read it several times. It's easy read. It's real life solutions. And it gives a lot of different scenarios to try to help you plan for the best available performance you can do nutrition wise. If you want an easy book to give to share with kids, this is it. This is, it's not Easy's great information, but it's presented so everybody can understand it. So thank you for writing the book. Well, absolutely. I appreciate it and thanks so much for your help and support and I hope this I hope this will help. All right, everybody, if you'd like what you're listening to, please share, like, and subscribe, and we'll come back at you more from the ICA Sports and Fitness Science Podcast. Thank you.