What is Needed for Good Health and Improved Athletic Performance?

What can contribute to maintaining optimal health?

It is often observed that athletes attribute the improvement or decline in their performance, and consequently their undesired results and failed goals, to a single factor (e.g., inadequate nutrition; insufficient training), which is believed to be the sole culprit for the situation. Therefore, in today’s article, we will try to present a broader context of this thinking and illustrate what can contribute to maintaining optimal health, which is crucial for athletes for the long-term maintenance of form and improvement of athletic performance.

For easier understanding, we use the image below, where the roof can be imagined as health and athletic performance, and the supporting pillars as the factors that hold our roof in the desired, stable position. If we translate the pillars into specific factors, it would be sensible to mention the following: sufficient and quality sleep, properly planned (balanced) nutrition, and properly planned physical activity are often quite well known and to some extent aware “pillars.”

Recently, the importance of psychological stability or maintaining optimal mental health has also been highlighted. Besides these important mentioned factors, it is still essential not to neglect factors such as social security or stability, social interaction and good interpersonal relationships, and giving up or limiting health-damaging habits (e.g., excessive alcohol consumption). These factors can also significantly influence the stability of our roof or, to a considerable extent, directly affect the mentioned “basic” four factors, or vice versa.

As an example for better understanding, we present a person for whom nutrition represents a great burden, as they constantly worry about what should not be on their plate. Consequently, this affects their mental health and relationships with close ones, as they avoid social events that include food due to these issues.

At the same time, during training periods, they unintentionally significantly limit their energy intake, leading to poor training adaptation, constant fatigue, and poor recovery, which among other things, also affects their sleep. Lack of sleep contributes to additional stress, which they short-term resolve by constantly smoking, whose negative effects on health are well known.

In the series of upcoming articles, we will get to know in more detail two basic pillars:

1. balanced nutrition and
2. a properly planned training process.

Broadly, we would define balanced nutrition as an important pillar that provides an individual with the energy and nutrient needs for basic physiological body functions, performing daily (sports) activities, supporting the immune system, etc. As one of the foundations, it thus represents an effective approach to maintaining overall health and athletic performance. Among other things, it is also important in the phases of recovery and rehabilitation.

On the other hand, for athletes, we also want to have a properly planned training that requires certain elements to ultimately lead us to the desired goal. Many people first think of intervals or differently structured rides, but the foundation lies much earlier.

For the training process to be effective, we need two basic conditions. The first is consistency or regular training, where we want to be active as often as possible (probably once a week is not enough for consistent progress, but let this not discourage you from weekly cycling rides).

The second condition is the long-term sustainability of this process. We must be able to train week after week, month after month, and year after year. Here then comes true and long-term progress, of course, for which well-structured training is also necessary, about which we will talk more in the articles related to the training process.

In conclusion, let us once again remind you that each pillar is important and irreplaceable. It is crucial to try to optimize all the mentioned factors, which will significantly contribute to maintaining good health and athletic performance.