How much protein do athletes need?

I don’t care if it’s been since high school since you played soccer, basketball, baseball, or whatever your sport was, you are still an athlete. 

That doesn’t go away (especially for us nut job golfers). 

So, we spend a lot of time talking about workouts, but what do we need to eat to turn that work into real-world strength we can use on the course for distance, power, balance, injury-prevention, etc? 

In college, I remember taking 1lb packs of ground beef my Mom sent me, and just making a 1lb burger on a plate without a bun. 

Can’t say I really thought about my protein intake, but it sure beat Ramen noodles. 

Now that we’re all a little wiser, with a slightly larger food budget, we’ve got some choices. 

To answer the question of how much protein us athletes need, I reached out to our resident nutrition people over at 1stPhorm. 

Rather than play the telephone game, you can get it straight from the horse’s mouth: 

PROTEIN FOR ATHLETES: HOW MUCH DO YOU NEED? 

You can easily read it in less than five minutes, but here are a few highlights: 

  • What is protein? 
  • How much protein do we need as athletes (it’s different than couch potatoes)? 
  • What are the best proteins? 
  • A few addition tips. 

Yeah, so it’s a pretty succinct, informative article that’ll help us with our diets. 

STAY STRONG, 

Jeff 

PS – 1stPhorm is a nutrition company, so obviously they believe in protein supplements (as do I), but they will be the first to tell you that there is no substitute for getting your protein from your food. 

I’ve found that it’s hard to consistently get what I need, so it’s great to have a back-up plan – protein powder.  

You can find out more here