The 4 Best Micronutrients for Athletic Performance

Professional cheerleading is a sport and a pro cheerleader is an athletic artist. It requires you to compete against other aspiring and current pro cheerleaders from other teams. The competition entails dancing, stunting, cheering, tumbling, and jumping with higher energy while being able to maintain an athletic yet sexy body.

The greater the athletic performance of a pro cheer team, the higher the support of the crowd is and the better the home team plays in the game. Another athletic demand that pro cheerleaders should fulfill is being able to last throughout an entire event like major games and dance rehearsals without getting tired.

These activities require high levels of energy, strength, endurance which eventually drains your body of stored micronutrients for fuel. This in turn can result in you getting tired quickly for personal activities and the next events.

For pro cheerleaders to maintain quality athletic performance, they need to replenish their bodies with the lost micronutrients as well as increase the intake to meet the demands of the career. These are the micronutrients that impact your performance and the foods you can get them from.

1. Sodium

Sodium is an electrolyte that helps your muscles contract for movement, improves your body hydration, and maintains your blood volume for good circulation. When you perform demanding physical activities regularly, your body sweats and loses a lot of sodium. This causes dehydration and decreases your stamina.

The most common food source of sodium is table salt. High-sodium foods are commonly found in processed and canned food but they’re also high in saturated and trans fat. To get your daily amount of sodium healthily, cook your own meals and increase your salt seasoning in your recipes. You can also get sodium from sports drinks like Gatorade or Powerade.

2. Calcium

Calcium is another micronutrient that plays an important role in muscle contraction. However, calcium is for strengthening your bones for better and safe pro cheer stunt executions. Overall, calcium increases your strength capacity and brain to muscle coordination.

Cheese, yogurt, milk, soybeans, and dark leafy veggies are your best sources of calcium.

3. Iron

Iron is a key component of hemoglobin - the protein in our red blood cells that delivers oxygen from our lungs to our muscles. With iron deficiency, you will feel tired all the time even when you’re not performing physical activities. When you do, you have a high chance of passing out.

Iron is also highly responsible for energy metabolism, meaning this micronutrient helps your cells produce energy for pro cheer activity usage. You can get iron from red meat, dark leafy greens, seafood, legumes, and organ meats.

4. Vitamin B12

Every strenuous physical activity such as strength training causes microtears in your muscle fibers. Vitamin B12 helps in rebuilding body tissues making the recovery of your muscles from soreness faster. This micronutrient also helps in growing your muscles making them more resistant from wearing out due to high-intensity activities and continuous strength exertion.

Poultry, fatty fish, and fortified nutritional yeast are good sources of vitamin B12.

The high physical demand of the pro cheer career requires higher reserves of body fuel. So pay attention to your overall feeling. Strive to be energetic at all times. When you start to feel your athletic performance is decreasing, replenish your energy reserves by eating the foods mentioned above.

Increase your athletic performance by discovering more foods below:

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