Nutritional Recommendations for Water Polo

Abstract

Water polo is an aquatic team sport that requires endurance, strength, power, swimming speed, agility, tactical awareness, and specific technical skills, including ball control. Unlike other team sports, few researchers have examined the nutritional habits of water polo athletes or potential dietary strategies that improve performance in water polo match play. Water polo players are typically well muscled, taller athletes; female players display higher levels of adiposity compared with their male counterparts. Positional differences exist: Center players are heavier and have higher body fat levels compared with perimeter players. Knowledge of the physical differences that exist among water polo players offers the advantage of player identification as well as individualizing nutrition strategies to optimize desired physique goals. Individual dietary counseling is warranted to ensure dietary adequacy, and in cases of physique manipulation. Performance in games and during quality workouts is likely to improve by adopting strategies that promote high carbohydrate availability, although research specific to water polo is lacking. A planned approach incorporating strategies to facilitate muscle glycogen refueling and muscle protein synthesis should be implemented following intensified training sessions and matches, particularly when short recovery times are scheduled. Although sweat losses of water polo players are less than what is reported for land-based athletes, specific knowledge allows for appropriate planning of carbohydrate intake strategies for match play and training. Postgame strategies to manage alcohol intake should be developed with input from the senior player group to minimize the negative consequences on recovery and player welfare.

Physical and Energy Requirements of Competitive Swimming Events

“…The fact that these sports are performed in water where resistance to movement is much greater than on land presents additional challenges to the competitors. In successive articles in this series (Bernadot et al, 2014;Cox et al, 2014;Mujika et al, 2014;Robertson et al, 2014;Shaw et al, 2014b), each aquatic sport is discussed in reference to how its training and competition demands affect the nutritional requirements in developing and maintaining competitive success. Here we primarily examine the physical requirements of swimming because locomotion or movement in water is common to all aquatic sports, and many of these principles help to form the basis for understanding nutritional considerations in the aquatic sports.…”

Mechanism of the Effect of High-Intensity Training on Urinary Metabolism in Female Water Polo Players Based on UHPLC-MS Non-Targeted Metabolomics Technique

“…The beneficial effects of NR and NAM on blood TG and FFA levels can be explained by elevated NAD+ levels because NAD+ promotes SIRT1 activity and mitochondrial biogenesis, thereby enhancing mitochondrial FA oxidation and decreasing TG synthesis. On the other hand, water polo has a highintensity, intermittent activity pattern and its exercise pattern and duration are great challenges for the aerobic and anaerobic metabolic pathways of the organism of athletes during competition [48]. During long-distance swimming competitions (15-22 min), the athlete relies mainly on aerobic metabolism of sugar (70%) and glycolysis for energy supply (20%), and aerobic lipid metabolism for energy supply is 8% [49,50].…”

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“…According to Baker LB, Reimel AJ, Sopeña BC et al, fluid needs are assessed based on the effort performed, its duration, and the effort conditions such as water temperature (Baker et al, 2017;Baker, 2017;Martin & Tarcea, 2914). Thereby, undertaking most of the training in water can make it difficult to estimate the amount of water lost by athletes (Cox et al, 2014).…”