Jake Sankal, assistant strength and conditioning coach and team nutritionist for the Washington Commanders, sat down with Special Olympics Virginia to explain how players manage to stay fit and healthy while consuming large amounts of calories. Here are excerpts from our interview:
Special Olympics Virginia: What would be a good diet for the players during the season?
Jake Sankal: They need a lot of calories. That is the number-one thing, because they are burning so much energy to play football, and with their training and practicing and everything. So calories are always the key. They need a good balance, too, of carbs, protein, and fat. You don’t want to restrict any of those areas, but during the season they need a lot of carbohydrates, because that’s what you’re going to use as energy. They’re running around, they’re practicing hard, they're lifting weights, so they’re going to be burning a lot of carbs. And then protein really helps them recover, so they need that especially after practice or when they are done with their training. And then fat does a lot of different things for you, but for them specifically, their good healthy fats will help reduce joint soreness, will give them energy and help with their body producing things like hormones that they need to perform.
SOVA: Are there any foods and drinks that should be avoided?
Sankal: I don’t usually say completely avoid anything. Certain foods and drinks I would prefer they don’t have, but if they do, only on special occasions, like soda pop for one. There’s so much sugar! You're drinking sugar water! And not that these guys don’t burn a lot of carbohydrates, because they do, but there’s just healthier options. For them, don't drink a ton of soda, and don’t eat a ton of sweets. If you go out to dinner with the family and want to have dessert, that’s fine, but pick days where you’re training hard and playing football. Don’t pick a day where you’re not playing, because you're more likely to store that as fat. I try to have them avoid, for the most part, a lot of highly processed, packaged foods – desserts, sweets, and sugary drinks.
SOVA: What about fad diets or those that we hear about often, like Mediterranean, South Beach, Atkins, Paleo, Whole 30 or Keto?
Sankal: I get questions about a lot of them from our guys, so I have to have a good understanding of them and the perks behind those diets. I don’t ever recommend following fad diets or any specialized diet. I always just say the guys should have a performance-based diet, and that's what I do – I help them to pick and choose what to eat at the right times.
SOVA: Are there any that would be good or bad?
Sankal: It depends on the situation or time of year. So during the season, I wouldn’t recommend any of those. But in the off-season, if the guys are trying to trim down and lose some weight, and they come to me and say ‘I’m interested in intermittent fasting, I think it’s a way I can cut calories,’ then yeah. That is a really popular one with our guys. That's one where there’s something to it if you do it the right way. I’ve seen a few guys do it really well. It's helped them trim down. Keto is similar in many ways. So, there’s some good results in both of those. But if a guy is like, ‘I really want to do this,’ I say you can try it, but do it in the off-season when you're not playing football. The diet in the season needs to be all for one!
SOVA: Yeah, they need their carbs!
Sankal: Exactly! It's all about performing well, playing football, staying healthy on the field. But in the off-season, if you want to try some different things, it’s OK.”
SOVA: How do athletes maintain a weight, say of 300 pounds or more, without eating fatty foods or sweets?
Sankal: They have to eat a lot! Calories are always king. You can still have a lot of calories if it’s healthy food. Sometimes healthy food isn’t the most calorie-dense – like, you can’t eat 400 calories in kale. It would be impossible. So I just always encourage them to eat more of the healthy stuff rather than the calorie-dense foods. Sometimes, there are cases where I might recommend more calorie-dense foods, like a pizza for example, where a guy has trouble keeping weight on, can’t seem to eat enough, and needs something more calorie-dense. They can do something like that, and it will help them, because the way they are genetically built, they are not likely to store it as fat. Those are the situations where I would recommend something that is considered not so healthy for an athlete. But most of the time, I would recommend the healthy stuff.
SOVA: If someone has a really busy schedule and they might not have a lot of hours in the day to make a healthy meal, what kind of advice would you give to them?
Sankal: This is the case for a lot of our guys, actually, because they spend so much time here at the facility training, watching films, sitting in meetings, practicing and lifting weights. A lot of them struggle with having the time to prepare big meals, and you have to clean up afterwards, and it takes forever to prepare, to cook, to eat, and to clean up. I always recommend quicker, healthier options, like things that are easier to make that don’t take as long, or don’t have as many ingredients. And then in some specific cases like with our guys, I recommend meal prep services, which are essentially places that prepare meals for you for the whole week, and then they drop at the house, or you pick them up. That way, they have healthy options their fridge at all times. Now, there are also some cases where the guys want to eat at fast, casual, quick places like Chipotle or Cava or Panera, so if they tell me, ‘This is what I typically do and can you help me with some healthy options,’ then I’ll recommend specific things at those places for them.
SOVA: So they have a lot of options!
Sankal: Exactly. What I have learned over the years working with these guys is that the best thing is to have a lot of options. This guy is different from that guy, and their situations at home are different. Depending on what they need, you always have some type of resource that can help them and still allow them to eat healthy and have the food that they need to be able to perform on the field.
