It is common knowledge that athletes of any kind need sufficient amounts of protein to allow their muscles to recover, repair, and get stronger from the abuse that their sport and training inflict on them. For climbers the challenge is to get enough high quality protein without consuming so too many calories that it results in weight gain. To help you make educated choices about where you get your protein, Brian Rigby of Climbing Nutrition wrote an article outlining what foods are the best and worst quality protein sources.
“But despite the low bar for sufficiency, not all proteins are equal drivers of muscle protein synthesis. To reach this higher bar, you need to consider the quality of a protein—because while literally every living organism contains proteins, those proteins are not guaranteed to be rich in the amino acids the muscles need.” – Brian Rigby
As Brian notes, not all proteins are created equal and you are better off trying to stick to the highest quality sources to ensure that you are giving your body everything that it needs to recover. To evaluate types of food, Brian considered:
- Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score or PDCAAS (a proxy for completeness and digestibility)
- Amount of leucine per serving
- Amount of protein per serving
- Number of calories per 20 grams of protein.
Brian then ranks foods in the categories
- High quality sources
- Mostly high quality sources
- Medium quality sources
- Low quality sources
Click through bellow to read the whole article. It’s full of detailed information and may just change the way you source your protein.
Also if you are looking for more information on nutrition and nutrition for climbing in particular, check out our Rock Climbing Nutrition Guide by Aicacia Young for more information about how to eat a healthy diet that will fuel your climbing and training.
Click Here: The Best Sources of Protein
(photo courtesy of climbingnutrition.com)
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