Two weeks into the new college football season Texas State has a 1-1 record, the best start since the 2017-18 season.
The team’s nutrition and dietary plan is one of the many key factors that have played a part in the promising start to the season.
According to redshirt senior center Caleb Johnson, nutrition is vital to the team’s ability to perform.
“It’s probably the number one thing because if you don’t have any fuel, you can’t do anything,” Johnson said. “You’re going to be cramping. You’re going to be falling out. You’re not going to be able to put forth the effort you want to on game day and in practice because you just physically can’t do it.”
Johnson said the team’s nutrition and dietary regimen is very adequate while being relatively straightforward and simple.
“We have three square meals a day. We have breakfast, lunch and dinner that we’re assigned to, and we always have snacks available to us, things like protein shakes, chips, snack bars, Gatorade,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the food served to the team constantly changes.
“Some days we’ll have shrimp and pasta. Sometimes we’ll have burgers. We usually always have broccoli or a salad,” Johnson said. “We usually always have carbs, proteins and some fruits and salads if you want it. The biggest thing is the carbs to keep you going.”
The team also has mandatory pre-game meals every game day. What is served to them changes from week to week and is dependent on game time.
“If it’s a six o’clock game, we’ll have breakfast buffet style with all the essential stuff we need. Tons of Gatorade, electrolytes, salts and stuff like that so we can stay hydrated throughout the day,” junior right tackle Nash Jones said. “Then, we’ll come back for the pre-game meal.”
Jones said pre-game meals happen every week no matter the time of the game and every player must eat whether they’re going to play or not.
“Pre-game meal is a must,” Jones said. “Some guys don’t like eating on game days, but you have to eat at the pre-game meal because you won’t eat until after the game. Pre-game meal doesn’t always have to be the most dense food, but you do have to eat something.”
Johnson said the food served at pre-game meals always consists of protein and carbohydrates to ensure the players can perform their best during games.
“Usually it’s steak or chicken, baked potatoes, mac and cheese, pasta with red sauce, so it’s a pretty good spread. It’s always focused around good protein and good carbs,” Johnson said.
The types of food served to the team doesn’t change from position to position, only the amounts of food eaten, according to Jones.
“For breakfast, I don’t eat a whole lot because we practice in the morning, so I eat a sandwich, a yogurt and some Gatorade to get me going for practice,” Jones said. “At lunch, I eat two plates, maybe two and a half, with water and Gatorade. I try my best to work in a snack between lunch and dinner. At dinner, I eat about two plates of food they provide us. And if I felt I worked really hard at practice or if it was extra hot that day, I have another snack after dinner so that I can maintain my weight at 315.”
The person in charge of overseeing the team’s nutrition and dietary process is the strength and conditioning coach, Bret Huth. Huth is one of the several coaches head coach G.J Kinne brought with him from Incarnate Word.
Jones said Huth’s nutrition plan varies from player to player depending on their circumstances.
“If there’s a guy who’s a little underweight, coach Huth will come to him and say ‘We need you to do this to get this amount of calories in’ and put him on the plan,” Jones said. “Iif you see a guy who’s a little bit overweight, we also put him on the plan to help him get down to the desirable weight that we need.”
According to Jones, Huth has greatly emphasized the team’s nutrition and diet plan since taking over as the strength and conditioning coach.
“Coach Huth preaches eat, sleep, hydrate,” Jones said. “If you don’t eat and hydrate, you can’t play.”
