Have you ever wondered about the dietary choices that professional padel players make to improve their game? In this article, I will reveal some of the inner nutritional strategies of the padel champions I coach.
I am Nicola “Nick” Zanetti, a nutritionist for elite athletes and musicians and an international bestseller.
In this article, I want to talk to you about the 3X Norwegian Padel Tour Champion, Benjamin Palm, and his routine to achieve greatness.
Benjamin, also known as Benji, is one of the top players in the Scandinavian padel circuit, and his story is quite remarkable.
He started playing less than 3 years ago, and with this limited amount of time, he had a lot of catching up to do! And that’s why he entered in a very intensive
This is a typical day in the life of Benji:
- Wake up early in the morning for fasted cardio for around 40 minutes
- Breakfast
- Goes to the office to work on his business
- Strength training in the gym for 60 minutes
- Post-workout meal
- Power Nap (30-45 minutes)
- Back to the office to work on his business
- Afternoon Snack
- Padel training with his coach (80-100 minutes)
- Post-training meal
- Sleep
- REPEAT
As you can see, his daily schedule is quite brutal. So how is that even possible? To sustain this kind of workload requires your body to produce energy in the best possible way, and to do that, you need to optimize your ATP!
What is ATP? This word describes the energetic coin of the human body. This means that if your body can produce ATP well, you will feel strong and energetic, and your matches will feel much better.
Have you ever experienced a drop in your performance midway through a padel match? Or perhaps you weren’t feeling physically tired, but your concentration and focus started to go down? In both cases, optimizing your energy (and your ATP) can help you perform better.
Let’s see what you need to do that!
As you can see, these are the nutrients that are required for you to perform at your best:
- Magnesium (around 300 mg per day)
- Iron (8.7mg a day for men aged 19 and over. 14.8mg a day for women aged 19 to 49. 8.7mg a day for women aged 50 and over)
- Vitamin C (at least 250 mg per day)
- B-vitamins (make sure all the b-vitamins are present, especially B2 and B3!)
These nutrients can easily be found in the three fundamental supplements for a padel player:
- A multivitamin and mineral (make sure that it contains all the b-vitamins + iron)
- A magnesium supplement in the form of magnesium glycinate or byglicinate
- And finally, some electrolytes to take during your match/training session
This concludes our first article on the nutrition of the padel pros. In the next article, I will tell you about what a padel champion eats before a match or a heavy workout. Stay tuned and see you soon.
Guest Author:
Nicola Zanetti
Nichola is a Padel/Sports nutritionist working with elite pro players such as Benjamin Palm.
