Just like other competitive sports, tennis involves a lot of body strength making it essential for your body to have a balanced amount of macronutrients sprinkled throughout your daily diet. Having a good amount of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats before, during and after your workout or match is important to build muscles and gain energy. Here’s what you can eat everyday as a tennis player to ensure proper nutrition and successful matches:

Breakfast

Breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day. Whether you’ve just returned from a workout or are getting ready for a match, you need energy to recover your muscles and fuel up for the day ahead. To keep your blood sugar levels balanced and your energy levels optimum, aim to include rolled oats, peanut butter, avocado, coconut water, and beetroot in your breakfast. Aim to add more complex carbs to your meal and drink at least 5 to 10 ounces of water every thirty minutes to aid hydration, even if you don’t feel particularly thirsty.

Lunch

Lunch requires enough calories for you to sustain your energy levels for the upcoming training session or match. Since there’s a significant break between breakfast and lunch, you need to supplement your meal with a mix of healthy fats, 10% to 15% protein, and other complex carbs to stay active. A good lunch for a tennis player should include healthy meat options such as chicken breasts and beef, seafood such as different types of shrimps and fishes like tuna. You can enjoy them either in a sandwich, along with salads, or with sourdough bread. Add some apple juice or dairy products to your meal to complete the nutrition component.

Snacks

Snacks should be light and only used to fuel you up before dinner, not be a substitute for it. You can keep it light with a handful of nuts or trail mix, greek yogurt with berries, peanut butter with fruits, or a protein mixed fruit smoothie. These can also be a great option before and after an intense training session. Make sure to check that you’ve met your ¾ water intake for the day by this time, if you haven’t yet, focus on drinking more water or adding more water based snacks to your diet like watermelons or coconut water. Remember, staying healthy on and off court is equally important, and even the choice of your snacks can impact your overall health.

Dinner

Dinner should be the lightest meal of your day. Chances are you aren’t going to go for a workout or match post dinner which means your body won’t be active enough to burn all the calories, so eat something easily digestible that won’t interfere with your sleep. For a nutrition packed dinner option, you can always go for one pot soups with vegetables and meat of your choice, salads, brown rice, sweet potatoes, broccoli, beans, roasted chicken, and prawns. Aim to add more complex carbs to your dinner as they’ll keep you fuller for longer. 

It’s A Wrap! 

Having a healthy diet is an integral part of a successful workout plan as well as fueling up for those tennis matches. By ensuring a balance between your carbs, proteins, and fats, and keeping yourself hydrated throughout the day, you’ll be able to enhance your performance significantly and stay focused on the game!