Training to win an MX championship: Nutrition

The fifth and final instalment of the series focuses on what to fill your body with.

Author Aaron Hansel

Everyone knows that proper nutrition is an important component of general health, but for top athletes like Red Bull KTM’s Ryan Dungey and Marvin Musquin, it’s crucial. Not only do they demand more from their bodies, they also undergo a high level of physical stress, making getting the right nutrients essential. Aldon Baker explains how he helps Dungey, Musquin and the rest of his elite athletes keep their diets on the right track.

Eat This

“Eating right is more about a set of guidelines than it is a specific list of foods, and the glycemic index [a system that ranks foods on a scale from 1 to 100 based on their effect on blood-sugar levels] is a good nutritional tool. You want to know what foods are high and low in the glycemic index, and that will tell you basically how much nutritional value and calories a food has,” Baker says. “Anything that’s low in nutrients and high in calories is probably the basis of what the guys need to avoid. Foods with good nutritional value, such as good vegetables, fruits and proteins that have the lowest amount of saturated fat with regards to the highest amount of clean and natural protein are ideal.”

Not That

“Guidelines are also key when avoiding bad foods. You want to stay away from things like saturated fat, which does not help your body in any way. In fact, it makes recovery harder and stacks additional work on your body, and that’s not good. You want to stay away from sodium and sugar too. Another thing is portion sizes, which are just out of control in America. It’s also important to pay attention to how your body responds to certain things – foods that you can eat a lot of and never really get full for a while, that’s your body telling you that the nutritional value is pretty bad.”

“There are some specific things I like my athletes to say away from, such as red meat. For what the body is getting from red meat, and what it’s having to deal with, it doesn’t add up. If I need a guy to gain weight, I’ll tell him to eat it once in a while, as long as he knows what’s in it and where it came from – it should be grass fed and organic. Breads aren’t that great, it’s important to limit bread intake, and I’m not a fan of dairy either. Today’s dairy is not the dairy that grandpa and granny used to have. It’s being mass produced unfortunately, and there’s too many issues and junk that accompanies that. Fortunately there are better alternatives, such as almond milk and soy products, that weren’t available back in the day.”