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How to be a Healthy Baseball Player
"Baseball is ninety percent mental, and the other half is physical", this is how Yogi Berra(former New York Yankees catcher) sums up the game of baseball. One way you could interpret this quote, is that the intelligent and competitive players are the ones who keep their bodies healthy and injury free. The only players that make it to professional baseball are the ones who do not suffer serious injuries; which are easily prevented when taught how to avoid them at a young age. These days there are many parents who think their kids are ready for organized sports, but are their bodies fully developed to endure competitive activities? No. In fact, children, along with parents, do not have the knowledge or are not aware of the amount of individual effort it takes to remain a healthy and competitive athlete. Not only does it take educational awareness to prevent injuries, sustain athletic abilities and maintain a healthy nutritional diet, but it also takes more than one expert or professionally designed method to insure all three of these goals are met. For the purpose of this research paper three types of nutritional plans, workout routines for baseball players, and injury prevention methods will be explored. In order for a baseball player to have a successful nutritional diet, remain physically fit or sustain athletic abilities, and prevent injuries, more than one method must be adopted and applied. Limiting a baseball player to one plan, method, or routine leads to inevitable lack of awareness and knowledge for unexpected sports related situations, and ultimately puts the player at a higher risk for injury. As a baseball player becomes more competitive the need for a healthy nutritional diet increases dramatically. In order to lessen the risk of an imbalanced nutritional diet, baseball players must follow more than one nutritional plan. One leading medical expert in sports medicine and nutrition, Dr. Strand, emphasizes that in this modern era, “our stressful lifestyles, polluted environment, and over-medicated society, this generation must deal with more free radicals than any previous generation that has ever walked the face of the earth” (www.raystrand.com). Free radicals are “charged oxygen molecules that are missing at least one electron and desire to get an electron from the surrounding area” (www.raystrand.com). In other words, Dr. Strand recommends that the key to having a well-balanced nutritional diet is not just eating healthy, but involves reducing the number of free radicals the body produces by increasing the number of anti oxidants that will increase the nutrients in your body that are needed to combat oxidative stress. Meanwhile, J. Anderson, Food and Nutrition Specialist and Professor at Colorado State University, recommends that drinking water to keep fluid in the body and to keep body temperature low, along with eating carbohydrates, are the main ingredients for a healthy nutritional diet. While other recommendations follow, like eating protein and fats, Anderson stresses that keeping water and carbohydrates is far more necessary for peak athletic performance. Anderson states that “Carbohydrates yield more energy per unit of oxygen consumed than fats” (“Nutrition for the Athlete”, J. Anderson, et al.) He also mentions that as athletic workouts increase, carbohydrate utilization increases. It’s understandable that this recommendation is offered because as a baseball player reaches his or her peak of athletic performance, carboh...