When you are talking about integration o supplementation of the athlete, we must consider an extremely heterogeneous world in which there are people who practice activities with a competitive character and others with an amateur character, whose metabolic expenditures are extremely different. Generally, those who practice sports at an amateur level train on average 3 times a week, for a maximum duration of about 2 hours per session.
This type of business involves a increased energy requirement but compensable with adequate and correct nutrition, often without the need to resort to the use of dietary products or food supplements.
Otherwise, the professional sportsman, who carries out heavy workouts and extremely demanding competitions on a daily basis, with particular muscular load, both in terms of endurance and power, must carefully take care of the nutritional aspects.
In these cases, the diet must take into account the anthropometric characteristics of the athlete, the specific training programs, the competitive calendar and the technical characteristics of the competition, both for the quantity and for the quality of the nutrients to be ensured.
La diet of the athlete, in quality, it generally does not differ much from that of the others and must be composed of unrefined foods with a high content of macronutrients (carbohydrates, proteins, fats) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) and a correct water intake, not limited to time of meals but distributed throughout the day, especially when sports activities are carried out in environments with particular climatic situations such as high temperature and / or high humidity.
The aforementioned characteristics and the needs that arise often lead to the need for suitable integration: in this context there can be a wide range of supplements (minerals, vitamins, proteins, amino acids, plant extracts, etc.).
THEsuitable integration, which must always take place after a careful evaluation by adequately trained healthcare personnel, has the aim of compensating for any shortcomings and offering a possible improvement in performance but above all speeding up recovery and, the main objective, the maintenance of an optimal state of health.
Mirco, how many days a week do you train and for how many hours?
Every day, 18 workouts per week.
What kind of training do you do? Tell us about your typical day
The alarm clock is set at 7:00 to immediately perform an activation muscle workout. A hearty breakfast follows, then a second daily training session lasting about two hours.
Lunch and rest to present yourself to the afternoon training still in excellent shape. Dinner is very early in the evening to be able to go to sleep early.
Are you careful what you eat?
Proper nutrition is as essential as training for a top-level athlete. As athletes of the national team, our Federation makes us follow by doctors and nutritionists who look after our diet. Over the years, I myself have learned to be careful about what I eat.
Does weight lifting, a sport you practice successfully, require careful nutrition but perhaps also the use of supplements?
Being a sport with weight categories, we must constantly keep anthropometric and nutritional parameters under control; for this reason we constantly follow a balanced diet to which we associate a integration program, as suggested by the healthcare staff.
How often do you use supplements?
I follow integration cycles with proteins, amino acids and multivitamins depending on the various training phases for about three weeks followed by a wash out phase.
We want to thank you Mirco Scarantino for his availability and we take this opportunity to wish him a great good luck for the immediate next Olympics!
Interview by Dr. Annamaria Salvati
