Pre-Game Meal For Hockey Players

For some odd reason, I can remember the weirdest things pertaining to my hockey career, even from when I was younger. This one particular time has to do with food and a regular bag skate we would do to help get us in shape. Looking back at my youth hockey, we actually did a lot of skating drills at the end of practice. I remember always being one of the last kids to finish the drills. I always thought it was because I was slow. Although that part was partially true, I later figured out it also had to do with what I was eating before I went on the ice.

I came to realize this because one time when we were doing our normal conditioning drill at the end practice I wasn’t as slow as normal. I figured it had to do with my diet and not only the fact I lacked leg strength and power. Years down the road when I became more educated on nutrition I looked back at that particular practice and wondered what the difference was that day? (this is how weird my memory is at times).

When I got older I was able to connect the dots and figure out that what I did differently before that practice was actually pretty simple. I had a huge plate of pasta! This whole time my muscles were missing  the energy from the carbohydrates in the noodles. At the time I didn’t know the importance of eating a high carbohydrate diet for energy.

So what makes the perfect pre-game meal?

• The timing of the meal
• What we are eating
• How many grams of each macronutrient (protein, carbohydrate, fat)

Let me first explain the timing of the meal and why this is important.

I’ve played hockey with guys who like to eat their pre-game meal 8 hours before a game and guys who like to eat their meal as close as 4 hours before the game. My professional (and personal) preference is around 6 hours before game time. This allows enough time for the meal to fully digest and helps prevent any type of stomach or indigestion issues that might arise come game time.

Now that we know when we should be eating, the next question is what should we be eating?

The ideal meal is some form of pasta (whole wheat is better) and some type of protein (chicken is best because it digests faster than steak). The amount of food we should be eating is where things get a little trickier.

How much we need to eat is based on how much we weigh and our activity level. If you are a hockey player I think it’s safe to say that you’re practicing at least 3 times a week with about 2 games on the weekends and possibly 1-2  off-ice workouts as well. I would consider this very active. To get your daily caloric allowance multiply your weight in kilograms by 45 for males and by 39 for females (Males use the following scale 42-51 and females 37 – 43. Use a higher or lower number based on your activity level)

As an example let’s say you’re a male and weigh 80kg. Multiply that by 45 and you should get 3600. This number represents the amount of calories you’re allowed in a day to maintain your current body weight. Breakfast should be about 800 calories and your pre-game snack should be about 500 calories and post game meal should be about 1000 calories leaving you with 1300 calories for your pre-game meal.

Of these 1300 calories, you’ll want 50-55% of them to be carbohydrates, 25-30% protein, and 15-20% fat. Since 1 gram of carbohydrates and protein represents 4 calories and 1 gram of fat represents 9 calories we can figure out how many grams of each macronutrient we need in our pre-game meal.

Next, we need to do some math to figure out much to eat, 55% of 1300 is 715 (this is how many calories of carbohydrates we’ll consume). Now that we know we can consume 715 calories of carbohydrates we need to divide that number by 4 (because we know 1 gram of carbohydrates equals 4 calories) to figure out how many grams we’re allowed. With some quick math, we know we’re allowed about 179 grams of carbohydrates in our pre-game meal.

We’re not ready yet because we still need to do this for protein and fat. Our allowance for protein is 30% and when we multiply that by 1300 we get 390 calories of protein and when we divide that number by 4 (1 gram of protein equals 4 calories) we end up with 98 grams of protein. And the final macronutrient is fat and 15% of 1300 is 195 calories and when we divide this number by 9 (1 gram of fat equals 9 calories) we get 22 grams of fat.

I am sorry if this part is a little confusing but it is important that we don’t overeat as this will not give us any more of an athletic advantage. To the contrary, it can contribute to stomach and digestive issues. If we under eat we will deprive our muscles of the nutrients they need to provide us with the energy to perform at a high level.

Now that we have our numbers we can put together our pre-game meal. With our calculations from above, we’ll want 240 grams of whole wheat spaghetti with sauce, 190 grams chicken breast, and 1 tbsp of olive oil. Bake the chicken in the oven,  boil the spaghetti noodles and put a nice red sauce over the noodles along with the olive oil and you’ll have a meal that will fuel you throughout the whole game.