I've been involved in various sports (some competitive) for quite a while now. I've always been interested in nutrition and recovery for this reason. Honestly, the field is not really well understood and there is a lot of conflicting advice that you'll run across. The sport you're trying to optimize for (or more correctly the activities you're performing) will also change the type of recovery that works best. Training and recovery for a long distance cycling event is very different from training and recovery from competing in a Jiu Jitsu tournament. And both are different from doing a power lifting event. I also have a strong suspicion that different genetic backgrounds will have some impact in what types of foods help you the most and the correct amount of sleep.
A few universals that seem to hold though:
- Sleep is the greatest performance enhancing drug. The more that I sleep, the better I retain newly learned skills, the faster I recover from injury, the better my concentration is.
- Healthy eating habits (lots of fruits/veggies, some lean meats, complex carbs, not too much sugar or salt) will improve and maintain performance better than any other fad diet. Avoid heavily processed foods as a general rule.
- Alcohol is bad for you. It messes with your sleep, slows your recovery, and serves no benefit.
- Don't get fat. If you gain a significant amount of fat (like 40+ lbs over your lean weight), you can make these fat cells shrink and lost much of the weight . . . but the fat cells will be hanging around with you for the rest of your life. They never actually go away. In many cases, you'll have jiggly bits around the midsection no matter what exercise/diet you follow so you've got to make peace with that. In many sports, this will prevent you from reaching the highest levels.
- Age matters (a lot). Regardless of what you do, your ability to recover worsens as you age. You sleep worse with age, which impacts recovery but it's deeper than that. Your body just stops doing things as well - it doesn't build muscle as easily (hormonal changes), and soreness will last for longer. Temper your expectations as you age or be ready for disappointment. That said, you can maintain a high level of athletic ability much more easily than gaining it from scratch . . . so by continuing to be active you can fight off many of the negatives that people tend to associate with aging.
- Supplementation is a pretty big field of bullshit with a few exceptions. Protein powder helps for recovery, muscle building, and to prevent muscle loss when cutting weight. Creatine seems to have benefits for many sports - increasing power endurance, enhancing sleep, having a protective effect from concussions, improving cognitive function, etc. Caffeine can also help especially with endurance sports if used as performance enhancer and not as a daily thing you're addicted to. Beet root juice probably gives a small improvement to endurance. I guess hormonal stuff with 'roids as well, but the knock on negative effects have never made this an appealing option in my mind.
- Hydration is important. But people seem to overly focus on this. It's only really an issue if you're exercising heavily for a couple hours (maybe just more than an hour in very warm conditions). Again, this is a thing where I think you've got to figure out what works for you personally. Weigh yourself before and after exercise to get an idea how much you need to rehydrate. You also need to figure out how much liquid you can drink during your sport to avoid that horrible sloshing feeling in your stomach. I'll easily kill three liters of weak gatorade on a five hour bike ride in the middle of the summer and then have lost seven or eight lbs when I get home. For a two hour session of rolling in jiu-jitsu I might drink two liters of water, but I find I don't seem to benefit from electrolytes or sugar like on the bike (maybe because of the explosive start/stop nature of the activity vs the constant low drain from cycling?).
