Hey, this is Shaun with the award-winning GoTennis! Podcast powered by Signature Tennis.
Check us out at LetsGoTennis.com and we invite you to learn more about the award by following
the link in the show notes.
And as you're listening to this, please look in your podcast app where to leave a review
and do that for us.
We would love to earn your five-star reviews.
And now let's get into our recent conversation with Page Love.
Page is a registered and licensed dietician.
She works with college teams as well as both professional tours, the ATP and the WTA.
She offers some amazing advice for every tennis player.
Have a listen and let us know what you think.
Who are you and why do we care?
I am Page Love.
I am a sport dietician, but I'm also a registered and licensed dietician, which is important
as tennis players seek their nutrition advice.
You'd want that person to be qualified in the field, just like we have certified tennis
teaching press.
We want to do the same thing in the nutrition area too.
I own my own consulting business.
I consult with a lot of tennis players, college teams, and both professional tours, the
only registered dietician sport dietician for the ATP tour internationally.
I'm one of three dieticians for the WTA tour.
I actually travel for both tours, do on-site tournament work, grew up in Atlanta playing
junior tennis.
I play college tennis for Baylor.
I still play, but I have to say, you guys might not like this.
I'm also playing some pickleball.
It's helping my tennis.
I'm telling you, it's helping my reaction time and my movement.
But I love my records forths and I still participate.
I also write a regular column for Altenette News.
As people hear what we talk about today, if you're interested in reading more about some
tennis-very consumer-oriented sport nutrition information, there's lots on the Alta website.
They catalog everything that we've put up there.
Lots of nutrition topics related to tennis.
I love it.
Bobby, I'm going to let you jump in early.
I'm going to encourage you to jump in early because you know Paige from back in the day,
should I say?
Paige and I were mixed doubles partners back in the day for a couple of successful seasons.
Now, she continues to play.
I think I pretty much retired as her as my mixed doubles partner.
We had a lot of success at 003, a lot of success at 002, and then we went to 001 during the
summer and that was Waterloo.
We were all in our mid-30s.
A couple of people made the mistake again in relationships.
The team wasn't as much fun as it was when we started, but we had a couple really good
seasons.
We had quite a wild following.
We had a gentleman.
He remember Dave Snyder, Paige, the guy he played on a different team, but he liked us
so much.
He would play his match and then come join us because we played out of it.
A department complex, our first year, and they let us have access to the pool.
He had literally a mobile, bloody, merry kit.
I mean, in the pool, they floated and it post-match, this is what we did.
Like you said, Paige and I had a lot of success.
Now, I'm not going to rat Paige out and say, "Probably, we didn't have the best out of food
next to it, but that's for another time."
That is something I do address in those out to articles.
The right kinds of food to have for the team play, but I will say the bloody merry mix actually
is decent sodium recovery.
Not the alcohol, but the bloody merry mix.
Tomato part is actually excellent for recovery.
I'm pretty sure they would not throw it.
Yeah, that's it.
Bloody marries to recover from just drink the mix.
Virgin, Virgin, Bloody marries, or just tomatoes.
There we go.
There's the real advice.
Then, the real question here is, you've got connections on to or what everybody wants to
know.
Do you know Coco Gough?
I have met her and I have worked with her briefly.
We have very, I would say they're not, you know, sit down for two hours and talk to a player.
When you're on site, I'm in the training room, so it's brief interactions.
One of the roles that the dieticians serves is we review quarterly blood work.
We also prescribe supplementation based on low-sir highs and people's blood work, also medical
issues that they're reporting.
The main interactions with the players are in reviewing their diet and blood work at that
time.
Also addressing if they've had heat illness, that's the biggest issue, obviously, on the
tour.
In fact, they target us at hot tournaments so that we can help in the moment when they're
having heat illness.
So, I've had interactions with she and many on these kinds of topics.
Just keeping the girls healthy, it's kind of cool to watch what's happening on the women's
tour. Their sport nutrition, sport medicine program is quite extensive and we've seen that
the women are staying healthier and they're not getting as run down.
They're not getting as many colds.
We're helping them maintain more normal blood levels of key nutrients like vitamin D and
iron, which impact their immune system and their energy.
It's really neat to be able to look at the big picture and provide them what they need.
Like I was saying, with the college teams, I go with the players to eat even in the players
I only have them get an optimum sport nutrition meal sometimes before or after.
So pre-play, post-play, I'm dealing a lot with that.
Pre-match post-match nutrition as well as their hydration needs and around the heat, all
my sense of it.
Love it and that's got to be such a fun thing to do.
But I'm picturing you with a notebook flipping through blood work.
Okay, Coco, here's your blood work and Alex, here's your blood work.
Taylor, this is ridiculous.
Come over here and talk to me.
What does that even look like?
You gave us a little glimpse just a second ago, but how is that?
The women, we do a lot of our work very out of sight like in the training room and sometimes
we'll have a sightly private area.
You just write there in the training room, honestly sometimes right when they're receiving physical
therapy because their time is so limited.
So the dietitians are placed in a visual place.
Remember when they'll see us to think, "Yeah, I need to talk to you about blah, blah, blah."
Or "I need to talk to you about blah, blah, blah."
So we will get to visually be there while they're getting medical care.
It's a very team treatment orientation for them with the men because I'm not in the training
room.
I'm usually out in the players' arms.
A tournament, I go to tournaments a lot for the men in the US, Miami Open and DC Open,
both because heat illness can be an issue.
But I'm positioned in the players' lounge and I do actual heat stress testing.
I test their saliva to determine, are they well hydrated before they go on the court so
they can make adjustments right away.
The concentration of our saliva tells us about how well hydrated we are.
I do pre-impose match weights with a pretty sophisticated scale that looks at total body
water shifts so they can know how much water weight they've lost in their sweat so that they
can immediately rehydrate.
They can also, obviously, before, if it's showing any levels of dehydration, we can encourage
them to appropriately drink.
I also sweat tests the men on the spot, which means they, I give them a patch that they
wear during their warm-ups before matches in the heat and they bring it back.
I squeeze out the sweat into a test tube into a little tray and I have a device that touches
a computer ship that touches the sweat and it can tell specifically the sodium loss per
hour.
And now the sport nutrition has gotten so sophisticated that we can then prescribe, "Okay, you need to do
this much of this beverage that contains this amount of sodium to keep up with the rate
that you're losing salt in your sweat."
Some of the men have sweat rates upwards of 2000 milligrams of sodium loss per hour and
the US dietary recommendations for sodium low end are 2000 milligrams per the whole day,
but they're losing 2000 milligrams per hour in the court.
I don't know if you all have notice.
There's all kinds of electrolyte powders and formulas and pills and salt sticks and all
kinds of stuff.
So the insurgents of the high sodium products has really matched the science identifying
that increased sodium losses.
I think that pretty much answers the "Why are you unique?" question that we usually have
because it's really great information.
The only other off-script question I have is Bobby, are you willing to share your post-coaching,
post-on-court meal with Paige to say, "Hey, is this the right thing I should be doing
after being out in the sun?"
No, but I do want to say, I mean, I think that's a great way to look at it because I, you
know, as we've gotten older and as the tennis player in Atlanta has gotten older, I, my limited
medical background, which keeping them on, I was pretty long, not pre-med, I think, you
know, there's been a, it seems like a more, a lot more what I call the calf injuries over
the last 20 years where, you know, 25 years ago, people weren't popping calves.
I think it's a combination of where older playing and the other side is we don't hydrate properly.
So if you have a 9 a.m. or a 1 p.m., depending on what male or woman, when should you start,
what year, when should the alpha tennis player start hydrating to be ready for that match?
Not, you know, I'm going to eat a banana, you know, the old Michael Chang eat a banana at
10 a.m. in the middle of my match because that's going to do something.
That might be alive, but that's not helping you with your hydration.
Which, when should you realistically begin to hydrate?
Well, what, what you just described as the typical mentality, I would say even, even on the
ATP tour, I'm always a little surprised that some of the guys are modally dehydrated when
we do these hydration tests and this is, you know, a couple hours before they're going
to be playing.
So that's when people start thinking about it, when they start thinking about their hydration
and that's really too late.
I mean, it really needs to be a daily routine.
And then, yes, and then between the two to four hours before we want to be additionally
pre-hydrating, even with electrolyte sources if you're in the heat.
And then leading up to match play, you bring down the volume, but I would say on average,
we really want to be doing at least 16 ounces per hour going backwards leading up to match
play in the heat.
Now, it can be half of that when you're playing in a colder environment and you're not sweating
as much where I feel like players have really gotten the messages or on court hydration because
obviously they're thinking about how much to drink on court and we really recommend about
four to eight ounces every 15 to 20 minutes.
And then tennis, we have the perfect opportunity, unlike pickleball, to stop at the changeovers
and drink adequately.
And you know, if you're not drinking at a changeover, that's something you got to really
jump on, take advantage of it.
And I really encourage having a little bit of water and a little bit of your electrolyte
beverage, or sport beverage pending what you're drinking and what your needs are given
the heat.
So, you know, half a cup to a cup every 15 to 20 minutes to keep up with even low sweat rate
levels.
Most players don't keep up with that, so thus the need to know, okay, how much have I lost
in a match?
And of course, a lot of people would be like, great, I lost some weight, but when you've lost
it in that short time period, that is simply sweat loss.
And if you're going to play another match, you know, if a player in an tournament has
a singles one time and it doubles out another time, you want to be fully rehydrated by the
time you're getting back out to that second match.
Another very simple thing, a good takeaway on this discussion that anyone can do is just
look at your urine color.
We are always asking, "Are athletes looking at urine color?"
In the WTA locker room stalls, we have the urine color chart, and it goes from clear
all the way down to a dark brown with levels of hydration based on your urine color.
And the goal is a light yellow, we call it lemonade yellow color.
If you're clear, you're over hydrating.
So we want a little bit of concentration, that's a normal color.
And if it's that dark, dark yellow, then you're becoming dehydrated.
And we expect players when they come off of the court to be a little bit dehydrated and
then to drink accordingly to bring that back up to the appropriate hydration level, that
light yellow.
So just checking, urine color can be a great way to be aware of your hydration status.
There you go, that's good to know right there.
And going back to what you said, Sean, what would you, how long before a match page and
what would you say would be, I'm not out of it.
I guess my first point I was saying is you don't want to just be thinking about right before
the match.
You want to keep your daily hydration on schedule, be evenly hydrating throughout the day,
reaching out for those caffeinated beverages closer to tour.
There's often energy drink sponsors that want to sponsor a lot of these tour events.
And we just try to keep those energy drinks as far away from the players as we can.
We can't stop them from giving it to the consumers.
But obviously we don't want high caffeine any time close to the match because that's a
diuretic.
It causes you to pee out, mark fluid.
So the four hours before with good hydration practice is leading up to that stable in
the training diet.
And then that four hours before trying to get the one to two cup range, ideally the bottle
of water per hour, the regular half liter bottle of water per hour leading up to that match
time.
So now take it where would what's the time for food intake and what would be a good pre match
meal?
Well, in the ideal situation, you know, but you know, attendance is like an attorney.
You don't really know when you're going to get on because you're waiting for players matches
to finish.
That's definitely what happens in the pro world, ideally three hours before to allow adequate
digestion time.
You want a high carbohydrate meal, a little bit of protein, lower fat.
You want it to be fuels that are going to quickly provide fuel for the player, capping
off energy from their eating from the previous day and that morning.
So if it's a breakfast meal, something like oatmeal and toast and an egg and fruit would
be a great meal.
If it's a lunch meal on the tour, I would say pasta is still one of the most popular meals.
A pasta or rice base that's taking up half of the plate, maybe a quarter of the plate
in a protein, in a quarter of the plate in a light cook vegetable.
You don't want to do a lot of big salad meals before you play.
That doesn't give you energy.
Even if you're watching your way, you're going to go on the court with low energy.
You don't want to do heavy protein, you know, in these days with the popularity of keto
and paleo, that doesn't work for tennis.
I did a whole extensive research article on why these high protein low carb diets do not
work for the tennis player.
Tennis is anaerobic.
Lots of short power.
And a road moves on a court.
What fuel set is carbohydrate?
If you're on a low carb diet, you're not going to make it to the third set at the same energy
level you started off with.
You are going to be draining the tank pretty quickly.
So complex carbohydrates, carbying it up with things like rice, pasta, starchy vegetables,
corn, peas, beans, bowl meals are great.
I love a bowl meal for a tennis player, but not doubling protein.
So I have a 9 AM match.
We're focused, I mean, mostly about social tennis, right?
So the tour players already know, hopefully, what you know because you've told them.
But the people listening to this podcast, it's probably not cocoa herself.
But somebody with a 9 AM match, are you telling me I got to have breakfast at 6 AM?
Well, if you don't get up early, if you're not an early person, then you need to volume decrease.
So here's the on the run choice.
Sean would be something like a cliff energy bar in a banana and you know, you're one to
do bottles of water, something like that.
Or what I like to remind people with bars is think about the food equivalent of a bar.
A cliff bar is like a bagel and a bar.
I'd rather you have the food.
I'd rather you have the bagel with maybe a little bit of peanut butter to give you a little
bit of protein, banana for some quick energy and potassium and then the water for your hydration.
So if I'm in, let's say 730, I can be in the car at 8.
I'm driving to my match by 9.
I can have my breakfast at 730.
Yeah, I was told that breakfast right there.
But I will say the disclaimers, each person has unique gastric emptying times.
Some people who tend to be nervous might need more time and other people who are used to
eating closer to their activity time may tolerate a shorter window.
The ideal window for a full meal would be 2 to 3 hours.
A lot of people can tolerate a high carbohydrate, small meal like that within one to one and
a half hours before.
Yeah, we all love that tennis player that shows up and you get warmed up and they're like,
"Oh, I'm going to go to the bathroom real quick."
Really?
Now?
I'm going to get it.
We can't really control it, but you didn't put any thought into this before.
And the runners were about runners' trots.
I don't know if there's a term for tennis.
We could call it tennis trots.
There's a term for it, but we won't use it on this pocket.
I just thought it was part of the ladies warm up.
Okay, we're done.
We need to use the restroom before we can play.
Okay.
It's just every time, right?
Every time.
Okay.
So, we've covered hydration, we've covered nutrition from a meal perspective.
We've missed anything, Paige.
What else do you have for our audience that can really be helpful from an actionable advice
perspective?
And Sean, kind of, I think it's covering nutrition.
Uncourt nutrition.
Don't forget it's okay to have portable, little, easy to digest carbide resources in your
racquet bag.
So that would be things like, I recommend the little hunter-cali pretzels because what
you can digest is plain bland carbs and if they're salty, even better.
Of course, the higher carbohydrate energy bars, so that would be things like cliff or
Bobo.
I really like another brand called ProBar.
That's all natural.
It's almost like a trail mix in a bar.
So having those kind of things in your bag, I also am a fan of energy chews, which have
a little bit of starch and solution with electrolytes in what's like a gummy chew.
These are used in a lot of sports, but those are great on a tennis court, too, particularly
going into a third set when you're feeling like a sport beverage is not enough energy and
you're kind of hitting a low, but you don't feel like you can stomach solid food.
You don't feel like you could stomach a bar.
Then the energy chews are easier to digest.
And what's very similar to those are gels.
You'll see a lot of players on the tour squeezing gels and these are primarily high carbohydrate
solutions, which have a little starch and solution, very much like the chew.
It's more viscous, but with both of those, you have to make sure that you're drinking water
or that it just kind of glons up and up or gets.
So you want to make it available, drinking your water and sport beverage with it.
So it dilutes it down to make cities easier to digest.
Got it.
And Bobie reminded us of the question, what should Bobie be eating after he comes off
the court?
All right.
So that's recovery nutrition and what a lot of players forget to do is to get a good
quick.
And with post-hydrating, we kind of talked about important is to pick up for the sweat
losses.
So continuing to drink your water and sport beverage to continue to post-hydrate because
we're still sweating and cooling down.
But then as soon as you feel like you're able to stomach something more solid, trying
to get a very easy to digest protein source chocolate milk is a great choice.
So grabbing a chocolate milk, having a little bit of a protein type bar at that time.
So that would be like a cliff builder bar or a protein plus power bar or even a nut based
bar would give you like an Rx bar would give you some protein.
So you just want a quick digestible form of protein.
Is there an liquid form or an a solid but portable easy to quickly eat form?
And then trying to get a good meal.
So this is back to Bobie's, I don't know what he's eating, but trying to replicate the
fuel usage in the meal choices on the back end.
So we still need replenish carbohydrates.
We can handle a little bit more protein at that point because we're going into a resting
time.
We don't need to watch the protein level.
We can have a little bit more for recovery and we can also have more vegetables at that
time and then continuing to have hydrating beverages at the post meal.
So that's where we could afford to have a lean steak or a nice salmon filet, a bigger
piece of meat along with similar carbs.
Carbohydrate carbs like rice's potatoes, pastas and then maybe a side salad or a cook veggie.
But more volume in that recovery meal, particularly if you've had a three set match and you've
been out there for several hours and have expended a lot of calories.
So you couldn't afford to have like a bobby we covered all.
So my cheeseburger and french fries are in the ballpark.
They're just not.
Well, there are some redeeming points to that.
The burger if it's lean is lean protein, the bun is still some carbohydrate, but it's probably
a little more fat coming one than you burnt on the court.
So just keep that in mind.
Message here.
Now one quick personal question page because I take a morning concoction, I call it.
It's a tablespoon and a half of virgin olive oil, tablespoon and a half of lemon juice and
every now and then I sprinkle inside and I literally do this empty stomach every day.
It's terrible tasting, but is it actually doing something positive?
Well, I mean, each of those has some nutritional value.
What do you think you're getting from it?
Why are you doing that, bobby?
Because I want YouTube, who's the nutritionist who said this is great for you because obviously
I don't eat real well.
So I want this is my band aid for all my bad habits to start the day with some extra virgin
olive oil.
Yeah.
So you're getting a good healthy and saturated healthy oil.
Yes.
So that's it.
But that table swims a nice little chunk of healthy fat there.
So just keep that in mind.
I wouldn't do that right before you go on the tennis court.
The cayenne is highly anti-inflammatory, but could be a little rough on the tummy.
I don't know if it, but anybody who's in the sense of stomach might be a little cautious
on doing that.
I don't see any problem with you doing that in your day.
I just would do that concoction right before you're about to play.
I think it can feel a little heavy number one and possibly irritating to the gut.
But those those food sources, the nutrients present there are things that we can benefit
from for sure.
So not such a bad idea.
I know you got one going for you, Bobby.
Watch the right YouTube guy.
All right.
Exactly.
I think we're good.
Bobby, anything else before we hit her with King of tennis or Queen of tennis in this case?
I mean, we were doubles partners.
I wasn't really, I didn't know she went to Baylor.
How did we get along so well?
What's wrong with Baylor?
I've looked at you.
I mean, we were, we were rivals for Pete's Hates.
We were up and down 35 from each other.
I passed Baylor all the time on my way to UT to go party.
Yeah.
Good part about it is we eventually grew up.
I don't know how that never came up.
I don't know how that didn't come up.
Maybe for a reason.
We'll page.
We appreciate you being here.
We have one last question that we always love to ask in your case.
It is the queen of tennis question.
But we'd love to know if you were made queen of tennis, whether it was the professional
tour, social, the whole world or just local here to Atlanta, is there anything as queen
of tennis?
Is there anything you would do or change?
Well, something I think would be really cool to have.
Kind of all levels of play is just what we call sport fueling stations.
In Alten at Lano, we could do this because people are bringing food, but we just want to
have the right criteria so they know what to bring.
But where we'd have appropriate hydration sources, appropriate snacks to have on court,
pre-match options, appropriate post-match options.
And I've written a couple of articles about this in Alten at News.
So I would love, if I was queen of the court, the ability to get that message out to more
people and have the right hydration sources and fuels available, court side.
And it'd be kind of cool if we could have that sort of portable thing and we all kind of
contributed and put in the right components.
And we're learning along the way as we bring these things in as team members, but just everybody
having the right tools so that nutrition is not a limiting factor, but can enhance our
performance.
No matter what age, no matter what level, just having all the right fuels and hydration sources
to succeed.
Bobby, racket sports specific food truck.
I like it.
We had a portable bloody Mary kit.
Why can't we have a snack?
I mean, go in the wrong way, Bobby.
Go in the wrong way.
Look, business to me.
Why isn't this being sold in stores?
I mean, you know, this is what you're here's your pre-match.
Here's your during match, here's your post match.
I mean, I love it.
Well, let's talk later.
Maybe we have a business idea.
I think that an idea here.
I think there's a simple fire and give it to the people.
And that's the most crazy answer going to go at a junior tournament if we have something
like this.
Oh my god.
And it just be devil dogs and glass of milk.
I had pre-tournament matches.
So I mean, this is just the whole idea is a great thing.
So yeah, this is, evolution is a great thing.
All right, we'll put it on the list.
You swish to reality, that could be kind of cool.
All right, it's why we like to ask the question is because if we can help bring the queen of
tennis idea to reality, we will.
So we will definitely follow up a page.
Thank you so much for taking the time.
Bobby is always, I appreciate it.
Thank you.
It was fun to be with you guys.
Great to spread the message this way.
Thank you.
Well, there you have it.
We want to thank reGeovinate.com for use of the studio and signature tennis for their support.
And be sure to hit that follow button.
For more racket sports content, you can go to letsgotennis.com.
And while you're there, check out our calendar of events, great deals on racket sports products,
apparel, and more.
If you're a coach, director of any racket sports, or just someone who wants to utilize
our online shop.
Contact us about setting up your own shop collection to offer your branded merchandise to the racket
sports world.
And with that, we're out.
See you next time.
[MUSIC]