Baxters Food Group and Scottish Rugby

Baxters is the official training partner of Scottish Rugby, providing good tasting, nutritious food as part of the elite players' training programme. Baxters is working closely with Scottish Rugby using our knowledge and expertise in producing hearty soups to play an important part in the national team's diet. The focus is on the day to day training process, enabling Scotland's top players to perform at peak performance.

Baxters believe that preparation is the key to sporting success, and the new range of soups will give you the energy to tackle your active life. The nutritionally balanced Baxters Healthy Choice range has been designed to ensure each portion provides at least one portion of vegetables, and a source of protein and fibre, with no artificial additives, preservatives, colourings or flavours.

Performance Nutrition

Good nutrition is an integral part of everything you push your body to do;
physically, emotionally and mentally.

Performance nutrition can help:

• Provide the correct nutrients and energy to enable maximum work output in training and match play
• Delay the onset of fatigue and help prevent injury
• Improve the rate of recovery between sessions and maximise training adaptations
• Attain the optimal body composition for your field position

The Principles of High Performance Nutrition

1. Eat a wide variety of nutritious foods from all food groups
2. Meet energy needs of training:
   1. Carbohydrate foods for fuel
   2. Protein for repair, growth and maintenance
   3. Moderation of fat and alcohol (to make enough room for carbohydrates and protein!)
3. Avoid dehydration
4. Eat frequent meals and snacks
5. Good recovery practices help you recover from one day to the next

Seasonal Aims

Ideally, the off season is time to focus on your specific goals regarding body composition; organising and preparing yourself to meet personal nutrition goals, and to help avoid 'player fatigue' in the heavy training and competition plan ahead.

To peak for the start of the season, you should aim to:

1. Reach, and be able to maintain an ideal body weight (optimal power to weight ratio). It is important not to be putting too much focus on body fat loss during the season as this may compromise your performance
2. Ensure that your body energy stores (muscle and liver glycogen) are fuelled to capacity through adequate carbohydrate intake and refuelling
3. Ensure body fluid levels are kept adequate
4. Know exactly what, when and how much you should eat/drink in 24-48 hours prior to a match
5. Recover as quickly as possible for the next match/training session
6. Be in general good health and free from nutritional deficiencies that may lead to illness, infection or impaired recovery.

Fuel Sources

As rugby is an intermittent high intensity game you must be prepared for intermittent sprinting with recovery periods that vary. You need a high level of endurance capacity to sustain 80mins of play, covering a distance of 5 - 10 km in a game. Your position will determine the distance covered, your power output and energy needs.

Carbohydrate is the primary fuel source for exercise of higher intensities and forms part of the fuel supply for all intensities of exercise. Stores must be regularly replenished. Though fat is stored readily in the body it is not an efficient fuel source. Protein is also a very poor source of energy. It will only be transformed to energy under energy and carbohydrate restriction resulting in the loss of lean muscle.