half time food

Gatorade/water and orange slices

^{water, gatorade, bananas?}

and orange slices.

However, often times assistant coaches come down from the box with popcorn or hot dogs (those usually are not shared).

Do you provide this magic drink to all players or are they given the option to purchase it from you? I hope it is not the latter as you are in a position of power and selling items to your players for your own gain is highly suspect and unethical.

OK, how about pickle juice for the crampers? ever heard of this - had a trainer that swore by it.

I saw a 7-on-7 team coach supply their kids with some type of granola/energy bar - anybody else do that?

We do not SELL anything to our players, ever.

KB

I had one of my "former" coaches go nuts on us about using Gatorade. He was paramedic and all had been warned about the sodium etc.
I tried to tell him that the "salt" science was still undecided by a number of studies. However, because he knew everything in the world and that some doctors warn of too much salt, he wouldn't listen. I tried to tell him that his training was not with teenage athletes but with old people like me that just sit around.
But he said I was wrong. Hey, I probably am.

I'm sure I'm opening a great big can-o-worms here with Gatorade, and like products though.
In the 80's when I first started coaching the great minds of science banned our salt tablets and gatorade and made our kids eat bananas.

To prevent cramps, I noticed that they didn't work.
I had one kid, a big time cramper, must have eaten a tree full of bananas and he still cramped bad.
I knew from what I saw, that there had to be something more to it than that. Later, they started telling us to tell the kids to take potasium tablets, that that was what they needed. I decided that I wasn't going to tell the kids to take any kind of vitamin unless their parents told them to do it.
But the kids who said they took potasium tablets still cramped just the same.

It wasn't until about 7 years ago that I read a study where the doctors actually took sweat from different athletes to see what was in it. Can you imagine the nerve of actually testing sweat to see what it was?

Yeah, you guessed it, water and salt and trace minerals.
Amazing isn't it.

They also made an unusual discovery that we all knew but the egg-heads wouldn't pay attention to.
That some people cramp more than others.
Now there's some big time science there boy, wonder how many millions of $'s it took to find that out.

So we tell kids to don't sit around all day drinking cola and caffeine drinks. Don't sit around all day drinking sports drink like they were cool-ade either.
We have gatorade (or similar products) they can have.

If I have a two way player that cramps alot, we will talk to his family about it. I let them decide what is the best course of action for their son. Some use the higher salt products too.

We do dynamics before and stretch after practice in a cool down.
We let kids drink Gatorade at practice in limitation with as much water as they want.

This doesn't prove anything, it is totally anecdotal evidence, but I haven't lost a kid to cramps in 5 years.
OJW

Now if anybody has some better stuff than what we are doing and it doesn't cost $75 a bottle.
Please let us know what we need to do.

OJW

Coach, I was looking at a pedialyte knockoff at the Dollar General the other day wondering what it had in it.
(doesn't that just sound like a hick?)

OJW

Usually oranges, and water, now we may keep some GU gel on hand, ad well as a bottle of "pickle Juice "

Pedialyte has many uses. the best being a great hangover preventor. yep, slug down some pedialyte after a hard nights drinking and you will feel good as new the next morning. now you can prepedialyte as well ie before a hard nights drinking you slugdown some pedialyte.

peanut butter has a ton of protien in it but also lots of sugar. still a good scoop of peanut butter at halftime is good.

Coachwoodall,
I've never heard of yellow mustard for cramps, what is that one about?
Thanks OJW

LOL Coachwoodall,
Maybe I should use this "treatment" for a number of other issues I face during the game.
I could think of alot of things that a spoonful of mustard could be the cure for.
thanks, OJW

salt and vinegar, salt helps retrain water, vinegar is a blood thinner, works extremely well, same thing with pickle juice

Water, gatorade, oranges, bananas and something that is a little different (got the idea from the Steelers) Gummi Worms. Our parents have little bags made up with the gummi worms so they don't gobble large amounts and the players can take them if they want to. Some do, some don't, most all hit the gatorade, bananas, & oranges. We also preach pre-hydrating starting the night before and continuing through gameday up to & during the game. Have also had players use pedialite if they were prone to cramps.

Thanks for all the thoughts.... I'm very lucky to have someone volunteer to make our halftime snacks -- guess we are going to go with water, gatorade, and maybe fig newtons (seems like they would be easy to supply) and oranges.