Support Your Goals with Nutrition: Power vs. Endurance Athletes

Here are four amazing female athletes, two of them fitting into the bodybuilding category as professional Figure athletes and two endurance athletes, a long distance runner and a professional mountain biker. Discover the role that nutrition plays in the lives of these athletes through comparing and contrasting their daily diets.

Erin Stern

              Starting with the figure athletes, Erin Stern and Nicole Wilkins, we analyze these two intense women who consistently go up against each other both on and off the stage. Stern and Wilkins both follow a diet extremely high in protein, standard for power athletes, to support their very short term, immediate energy needs. These athletes rely on the immediate and anaerobic glycolytic energy systems. This type of training supports their desired look to have large, defined muscles and well developed fast twitch muscle fibers.  Most power athletes follow a diet high in protein and carbs and low in fats. However, both Stern and Wilkins push the limits, getting most of their calories from protein and keeping their carbs and fats intake low. Most likely, they up their intake of protein beyond necessary so they can stay extremely lean by having low carb and fat intake.

Nicole Wilkins

                Though the diets are similar, there is one slight variation in their carb intake. Wilkins focuses a great deal on protein, getting almost 50% of her daily calories from protein. Where Stern also has a very high, almost 45% of her calories, protein intake, she also takes in a bit more carbs than Wilkins. Knowing that Wilkins is a more standard bodybuilder whereas Stern is more of an athletic bodybuilder may account for the difference in carb intake. Stern trains quite a bit more in track and field and would need the extra carbs for energy.

                As for the endurance athletes, the story is slightly different. Paula Radcliffe as a long distance runner depends heavily on oxidative energy systems, her muscles are mainly made of slow twitch fibers. As reflected by her diet, she needs large amounts of carbohydrates to maintain  glycogen stores. Like carbs, fats are also important for Radcliffe because fats are a primary energy source. In her nutritional it is obvious that she depends heavily on carbs and fats, as she gets 26% of her daily calories from fats, 56% of her calories from carbs and only 18% from protein.

Emily Batty

                Like Radcliffe, Emily Batty is also an endurance athlete and needs a good amount of carbs and fats, but also a moderate amount of protein to support her fast twitch fiber repair. As a mountain biker, she performs movements that are explosive in strength and power on a sustained basis. Which means, like Radcliffe, Batty depends on the oxidative energy systems for the endurance but also uses the glycolytic energy systems. Therefore, her calorie intake percentages represent the need for all three macronutrients, carbs still being the highest at 58%, while fats and proteins are closer at 22% and 20%.

                The difference between the figure athletes and endurance athletes calorie intake ratios is enormous. Looking at the difference in carbs and protein intake by themselves could tell you a story about how they train, what they train for, and what they need to sustain that type of training. Radcliffe’s protein intake at 18% compared to Wilkins protein intake at 48%, that is a 30% difference, is the perfect comparison of nutrition a fuel for that of an endurance athlete compared to a bodybuilder or figure athlete. It is obvious that not all nutritional programs are equal for anyone that wants to get into shape, diet and nutrition play a huge role in supporting specific training goals.