Fuelling & performance nutrition for baseball and softball

An evidence-based guide to fuelling the baseball or softball athlete. Unlike a marathon, these games aren't a story about running out of fuel — they're a story about staying steady: level energy and stable blood sugar across a long afternoon, hydration and sodium in the heat and the long innings, and the focus and reaction time that a single pitch demands. This covers honest carbohydrate needs, the pre-game meal, keeping energy up over a game or doubleheader, hydration by your own sweat rate, staying sharp, pitchers' distinct demands, recovery, and eating enough overall. Practical, honest, and grounded in established sports-nutrition consensus. Pair this with the baseball strength & conditioning guide — the gym work behind the rotational power and arm health this fuelling supports.

Here's the short answer to "how should a baseball or softball player fuel?": start with a normal, carbohydrate-inclusive base in the tank, eat a familiar carb-focused meal a few hours before, keep blood sugar level over the game with light familiar snacks, and hydrate steadily — replacing sodium in heat — while eating enough overall. The glycogen demand of these sports is genuinely modest; the challenge is duration, heat and concentration, not running the tank dry. Everything below is the detail behind that sentence.

A framing note before the numbers. Sports nutrition is well studied, but people differ enormously — body size, position, the weather, gut tolerance, sex and health status all shift what's right on the day. So this is written as can, tends to and around, never as a guarantee, and every specific figure is a population-level guide drawn from published consensus, not a personal prescription. It's general education, not medical or dietary advice, and it isn't a personalised game-day feed plan.

A long, low-intensity game with explosive bursts

Watch a baseball or softball game with a stopwatch and the truth is obvious: most of it is waiting. Games can run upwards of three hours,^[1] but the actual work is a scatter of brief maximal efforts — a swing, a sprint to first, a dive, a throw across the diamond, a pitch — separated by long stretches of standing, walking and sitting. Baseball has been described in the sports-nutrition literature as a sport of short, intense bouts of activity that leans heavily on skill and technique, with energy supply roughly 90% anaerobic and 10% aerobic.^[1] That pattern is what sports scientists call an intermittent sport, and it changes the fuelling picture completely.

Those explosive bursts are powered mainly by the body's fastest, shortest-burst fuel system — phosphocreatine (ATP-PCr). Pitching is the clearest example: it leans heavily on the ATP-PCr system for the delivery itself, followed by roughly 20–30 seconds of aerobic recovery before the next pitch.^[2] Because the bursts are so brief and so spread out, the total amount of stored carbohydrate (glycogen) a game burns is modest compared with, say, three hours of continuous running. This is the honest headline of the whole guide: baseball and softball are not glycogen-limited endurance events. You are very unlikely to "hit the wall" the way a marathoner does. What actually degrades over a long, hot game is more subtle — steady energy, blood-sugar stability, hydration and, above all, attention and decision-making.

Daily carbohydrate and protein — the base

Good game-day energy starts with what you eat across the week, not just before first pitch. The joint position on nutrition and athletic performance from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dietitians of Canada and the American College of Sports Medicine sets daily carbohydrate targets scaled to training load: around 3–5 g of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight per day for light, low-intensity or skill-based activity, roughly 5–7 g/kg/day for a moderate programme of about an hour a day, and 6–10 g/kg/day for an endurance-style load of one to three hours a day of moderate-to-high-intensity work.^[3] Because the running and high-intensity content of most baseball and softball players' weeks is modest, many sit toward the lower and middle of that range — heavier on days with hard conditioning, strength work or a doubleheader, lighter on quieter days.

Protein supports the muscle repair and adaptation that all the sprinting, throwing and lifting demand. The same position stand recommends athletes eat around 1.2–2.0 g of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, spread across meals rather than piled into one.^[3] The point isn't to chase big numbers; it's to make sure the base is there so the game-day details on top actually matter. Chronically eating too little, day after day, is a far more common problem than getting the pre-game snack slightly wrong.

Before the game — the pre-game meal

The pre-game meal has one job: top up liver and muscle glycogen and stabilise blood sugar so you start level and stay level. Position stands describe a pre-exercise intake of roughly 1–4 g of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight, eaten one to four hours before exercise lasting over an hour^[3] — the larger amounts earlier when you have time to digest, the smaller amounts closer to the first pitch.

For a sport where you might be standing in the field an hour after eating, tolerance matters as much as grams. Favour familiar, lower-fat and lower-fibre carbohydrate you've eaten before games — rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, fruit — with a moderate amount of lean protein, and go easy on greasy, heavy or very high-fibre foods, which position stands note may need avoiding to reduce the risk of gastrointestinal trouble during the event.^[3] For an early game, a smaller carbohydrate breakfast plus a snack in the dugout does the same job. And the golden rule holds even in a low-intensity sport: try nothing new on game day.

Staying fuelled over a long game or doubleheader

Here's where the honesty pays off. Because glycogen demand is modest, most players don't need structured in-game fuelling at all for a single game — but two things make a light, steady intake worthwhile: a game that stretches well beyond a couple of hours, and a doubleheader or tournament day with multiple games and long warm-ups. Across those durations, blood sugar can quietly drift, and with it your energy and concentration.

The relevant benchmark comes from sports-nutrition consensus. The joint position stand puts intake at around 30–60 g of carbohydrate per hour for one to two-and-a-half hours of endurance exercise, and applies that range explicitly to “stop and start” sports as well as continuous ones.^[3] The American College of Sports Medicine's fluid-replacement position stand gives the same 30–60 g/h figure for intense exercise lasting longer than an hour, and notes it can be met by drinking 600–1,200 ml an hour of a 4–8% carbohydrate solution.^[4] For baseball and softball, treat that as a ceiling you rarely need to reach: most position players do well at the lower end, or simply with familiar snacks between innings. The table below frames it by how long you'll really be out there.

Notice what's not here: the up-to-90-grams-an-hour, glucose-plus-fructose fuelling that ultra-endurance athletes use beyond two-and-a-half or three hours.^[3] Baseball and softball simply don't burn carbohydrate fast enough to need it. The right approach is light and familiar — a piece of fruit, a handful of something easy, a sports drink in the heat — chosen for steady energy and a settled stomach, not for maximal grams. As always, rehearse it: the snack that keeps you sharp in the seventh inning should be one your gut has met before.

Fluid, sweat rate and sodium in the heat

If glycogen is the small worry in baseball and softball, hydration is the big one. These games are played through the hottest months, often on open fields in full sun, in kit that traps heat, for hours at a time — and catchers, pitchers and anyone in a doubleheader can sweat heavily across an afternoon. A fluid deficit beyond roughly 2% of body mass can compromise cognitive function and aerobic performance, particularly in hot weather.^[3] The National Athletic Trainers' Association's review of the evidence puts it plainly: performance was consistently reduced once hypohydration met or exceeded 2% of body mass, and heart rate rises by roughly three to five beats a minute for every 1% of body mass lost.^[5]

There's no universal millilitres-per-hour number, because sweat rates vary enormously — from about 0.3 to 2.4 litres an hour depending on intensity, duration, fitness, heat acclimatisation, altitude and the weather.^[3] The long-standing consensus guidance is to drink enough that the total body fluid deficit stays under about 2% of body mass, rather than to a rigid schedule.^[3] The most reliable way to find your own number is to weigh yourself before and after a game in representative conditions: a loss of one kilogram of body mass represents approximately one litre of sweat, which tells you how much you're under-replacing and what to aim for next time.^[3]

In heat and over long innings, replacing sodium alongside fluid matters: dietary sodium, from food or drink, helps you retain the fluid you take in, and athletes who sweat profusely — especially those with a high sweat sodium concentration — may be at greater risk of cramping, although cramps are usually put down to muscle fatigue rather than salt loss.^[3] Sweat sodium averages around 50 mmol per litre (about 1 g/L) but is highly variable,^[3] with whole-body sweat sodium typically spanning roughly 10–70 mmol/L between individuals.^[6] The ACSM's fluid-replacement position stand recommends including 0.5–0.7 g of sodium per litre of water in a drink taken during exercise lasting longer than an hour, since it can improve palatability, promote fluid retention and help guard against hyponatraemia in people who drink excessively.^[4] A standard sports drink covers both the light carbohydrate and the sodium in one bottle.

Concentration, reaction and blood sugar

Baseball and softball are, at their core, games of perception and reaction: picking up a pitch in a fraction of a second, tracking a fly ball, deciding whether to run. That makes the brain, not just the legs, a performance organ — and the brain is sensitive to two things nutrition directly controls: blood sugar and hydration.

On hydration, the evidence is reasonably clear but more specific than it is usually reported. A meta-analysis of 33 studies found that dehydration impairs cognitive performance, and that the impairment is greater once water deficits exceed 2% of body mass — with attention, executive function and motor coordination the domains most affected, and simple reaction time, notably, the least.^[7] So the honest version isn't "you'll react half a step slow"; it's "you'll notice less, decide worse and move less precisely". Milder deficits count too: sports-medicine guidance notes that hypohydration greater than about 1% has been shown to compromise cognitive function including task performance, short-term memory and mood state.^[5]

On fuelling, the case is weaker than the marketing suggests, and worth stating plainly. A review of carbohydrate supplementation in intermittent sport found a fairly consistent benefit for sport-specific skill in football at intakes of about 30–60 g/h, but mixed results in basketball and racquet sports, and very few benefits for attention and response time.^[8] A 2023 meta-analysis of ten randomised trials went further, finding that carbohydrate drinks taken before or during exercise did not significantly protect executive function afterwards.^[9] Treat in-game fuelling, then, as insurance against arriving or finishing under-fuelled — not as a cognitive edge. Both jobs are about not handing away sharpness you already have.

Pitchers — a distinct demand

A pitcher's day sits apart — though not in the way it's usually described. A single pitch is a maximal, whole-body, split-second effort powered mainly by the phosphocreatine (ATP-PCr) system, followed by roughly 20–30 seconds of aerobic recovery before the next one; across a whole outing, pitching places a relatively low demand on the aerobic energy system.^[2] What it does not appear to do is drain carbohydrate. In pitchers measured through simulated games, blood lactate after pitching was never high enough to cause skeletal muscle fatigue or reduce pitching velocity.^[10] So a starter's outing is demanding in volume, skill and tissue load rather than in fuel — a useful correction to the idea that a hundred pitches burns through glycogen the way a hundred minutes of running would.

The practical implications are about timing and recovery, not exotic numbers. A pitcher's daily carbohydrate and protein targets look much like a position player's,^[3] but the priorities on a start day are: arrive well-fuelled and well-hydrated; keep energy level across the outing with light, familiar intake; and refuel afterwards with carbohydrate and some protein to top up stores and support tissue repair and remodelling.^[3] Between starts, the job is unremarkable but important — eat enough, hydrate, and let normal daily nutrition rebuild the tank before the next time out.

Recovery between games and doubleheaders

After a game, two jobs matter: refill the glycogen you used and support tissue repair. How urgently you chase the first depends entirely on when you next play.

• Fast turnaround (a doubleheader, a tournament, back-to-back days). Here speed matters more. Where there are fewer than eight hours between two fuel-demanding sessions, position stands describe carbohydrate at around 1.0–1.2 g per kilogram of body weight per hour for the first four hours, then a return to normal daily fuel needs, plus around 0.25–0.3 g/kg of high-quality protein to support repair and remodelling.^[3] In practice that's familiar carbohydrate-rich food and fluids with sodium between games — not a heavy, greasy meal that sits badly before you're back on the field.
• Normal turnaround (a day or more until the next game). There's no need to rush. Simply hitting your usual daily carbohydrate and protein targets across normal meals refills stores comfortably before you need them. The "eat within 30 minutes or lose your gains" urgency is real only when the recovery window is genuinely short.

Across the day, aiming for the athlete protein range of around 1.2–2.0 g/kg, spread over meals, covers metabolic adaptation, repair and remodelling.^[3] The eating-for-results guide covers the broader nutrition picture in depth.

Eating enough — the quiet risk

It's tempting to assume that because a game doesn't burn carbohydrate the way running does, fuelling barely matters — and then to under-eat, especially for players chasing a leaner, faster build. That's the trap. Chronic low energy availability — not leaving enough energy, after training is paid for, to run the body's basic functions — is a recognised problem across sports, and it doesn't spare team-sport athletes. Nor does it spare baseball: a survey of 92 male college baseball players in Japan recorded a median energy intake of about 2,077 kcal a day and median carbohydrate of about 290 g a day, and concluded the group showed deficiencies in energy, protein, fat and carbohydrate against sports-nutrition recommendations.^[11]

Sustained under-fuelling is the root of what the International Olympic Committee (IOC, international) calls Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) — written REDs in its 2023 statement: in the IOC's own words, a syndrome of impaired physiological and/or psychological functioning experienced by both female and male athletes, whose documented outcomes include decreases in energy metabolism, reproductive function, musculoskeletal health, immunity, glycogen synthesis and cardiovascular and haematological health — leading to impaired well-being, increased injury risk and, the irony worth noting, decreased sports performance.^[12] Recognised indicators are worth knowing: bone stress injuries, low testosterone in men, absent or disrupted periods in women, mood disturbance and reduced sleep quality.^[12] None are things to push through; the answer is usually to eat more, not train harder, with help from a sports physician or dietitian.

Common questions

How should a baseball or softball player fuel for a game?

Think steady energy, not aggressive carb-loading. Baseball and softball are mostly low-intensity games punctuated by short explosive bursts, so the muscles' glycogen demand is modest; the real challenges are duration, heat and staying sharp. Show up with a normal, carbohydrate-inclusive base in the tank, eat a familiar carbohydrate-focused meal a few hours before, keep blood sugar level over a long game or doubleheader with light, familiar snacks, and hydrate steadily — replacing sodium in the heat. Sports-nutrition consensus supports around 30–60 g of carbohydrate per hour only once an effort runs beyond about an hour, and most position players will sit at the lower end of that. Practise anything you plan to eat or drink in a game beforehand.

What should I eat before a game?

Aim for a familiar, carbohydrate-focused meal that is lower in fat and fibre so it digests cleanly. Position stands describe a pre-exercise intake of roughly 1–4 g of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight, eaten around one to four hours beforehand — larger and earlier when you have time, smaller and closer to the first pitch if you don't. Add a moderate amount of lean protein and go easy on greasy or very high-fibre foods that can sit heavily through a long afternoon. For early games, a smaller carbohydrate breakfast plus a snack in the dugout works well. Don't try anything new on game day.

How much should I drink during a game, and do I need electrolytes?

There is no single number, because sweat rates vary widely between people and with heat and humidity — from roughly 0.3 to 2.4 litres an hour. The long-standing sports-medicine guidance is to drink enough to keep body-mass loss under about 2% over the game rather than to a fixed schedule, because a deficit beyond roughly 2% can compromise cognitive function — attention, executive function and motor coordination especially — as well as aerobic performance in the heat. In heat, over long innings or across a doubleheader, replacing sodium matters: the American College of Sports Medicine's fluid-replacement position stand recommends including around 0.5–0.7 g of sodium per litre of water for exercise lasting over an hour. Learn your own sweat rate by weighing yourself before and after a game, and drink to thirst plus that knowledge rather than forcing down as much as possible.

Do baseball and softball players need to carb-load?

No. Carbohydrate loading — eating around 10–12 g of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight per day for 36 to 48 hours beforehand — is aimed at events involving more than about 90 minutes of sustained or intermittent exercise, where muscle glycogen genuinely runs low. A baseball or softball game spends energy in brief bursts with long low-intensity stretches in between, so the total glycogen demand is modest and a full load is unnecessary. What helps is simply eating enough carbohydrate day to day so you start each game and practice with a reasonably full tank, plus a sensible pre-game meal.

How should pitchers fuel differently?

Less differently than you might think, at least where fuel is concerned. A single pitch is a maximal, split-second effort powered mainly by the phosphocreatine (ATP-PCr) system, followed by roughly 20 to 30 seconds of aerobic recovery before the next one, and pitching places a relatively low demand on the aerobic system overall. It does not appear to drain carbohydrate: blood lactate measured in pitchers through simulated games was never high enough to cause muscle fatigue or reduce pitching velocity. So a starter's outing is demanding in volume, skill and tissue load rather than in fuel. The priorities are starting well-fuelled and hydrated, keeping energy level across the outing, and refuelling with carbohydrate and some protein afterwards to support recovery before the next start or bullpen. The daily targets are much the same as position players; the difference is timing food and fluid carefully around starts and recovery.

How should I refuel during a doubleheader or between games?

When the turnaround is short, prioritise carbohydrate to restock what you've used and rehydrate to replace sweat. Position stands describe carbohydrate intakes of around 1.0–1.2 g per kilogram of body weight per hour for the first four hours when there are fewer than eight hours between two fuel-demanding sessions, plus some protein (roughly 0.25–0.3 g per kilogram) to support repair. In practice that means familiar carbohydrate-rich food and fluids with sodium between games, not a heavy, greasy meal. If you have a full day before the next game, there's no rush — just hit your normal daily carbohydrate and protein targets across meals.

Takeaways

• It's a low-intensity sport with explosive bursts. Baseball is short, intense bouts of skill-led work, roughly 90% anaerobic;^[1] the real challenges are duration, heat and concentration — not running the tank dry.
• Build the base daily. Match everyday carbohydrate to training — often around 3–7 g/kg on typical days — and eat around 1.2–2.0 g/kg/day of protein for repair.^[3]
• Keep the pre-game meal carb-forward and familiar. About 1–4 g/kg of lower-fat, lower-fibre carbohydrate, one to four hours before;^[3] nothing new on game day.
• Fuel lightly, only when duration warrants it. Most games need little; for long games and doubleheaders, ~30–60 g of carbohydrate per hour is the consensus range^[3][4] — no ultra-endurance-style 90 g/h needed.
• Hydration is the big one. Aim to keep the fluid deficit under ~2% of body mass;^[3][5] weigh before and after to learn your sweat rate, and don't over-drink.
• Replace sodium in the heat. For play over an hour, 0.5–0.7 g of sodium per litre of water aids palatability and fluid retention^[4] — a standard sports drink covers it.
• Protect focus. Past ~2% body-mass loss, attention, executive function and motor coordination suffer most — reaction time least.^[7] In-game carbohydrate is insurance, not a proven cognitive edge.^[8][9]
• Pitchers time it carefully. Each pitch runs on ATP-PCr with 20–30 s of recovery,^[2] and pitching doesn't push lactate to fatiguing levels^[10] — so it's the same daily targets, timed around starts.
• Eat enough, always. Chronic under-fuelling (RED-S) harms bone, hormones, immunity and performance,^[12] and college baseball players have been measured falling well short.^[11] When in doubt, eat more, not less.

If you remember one thing, make it this: baseball and softball reward the player who stays steady — level energy, level blood sugar, well hydrated and sharp from the first pitch to the last — far more than the one who fuels like a marathoner for a game that never asks it. Strathlon's job is to keep that base honest by adjusting your targets around the games and practices you actually log, so the everyday fuelling that underpins a long season is one less thing to guess at.

References

Sources for the specific figures on this page. Where a number reflects established consensus rather than a single trial, the citation is to the relevant expert body’s position stand, with the country or region that body belongs to named — guidance is written by national and regional organisations, and no one country’s advice is universal. The general fuelling and hydration numbers come from a joint United States and Canadian position stand and from two United States position stands (the American College of Sports Medicine and the National Athletic Trainers’ Association); the under-fuelling material comes from an international Olympic consensus statement; and the baseball-specific material comes from United States and Japanese research. Two sources below are produced by the Gatorade Sports Science Institute, a division of PepsiCo, Inc. (United States) — that commercial affiliation is flagged on each, and where they touch a contested claim an independent source is cited alongside them.

1. Hull MV, Neddo J, Jagim AR, et al. Availability of a sports dietitian may lead to improved performance and recovery of NCAA division I baseball athletes. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. 2017;14:29. — Survey of NCAA Division I baseball players in the United States. Source of the descriptions of baseball as “short intense bouts of activity… heavily reliant upon skill and technique”, games “lasting upwards of three plus hours”, and energy system usage of approximately 90% anaerobic and 10% aerobic. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5553601/
2. Gillett JS, Dawes JJ, Spaniol FJ, et al. A description and comparison of cardiorespiratory fitness measures in relation to pitching performance among professional baseball pitchers. Sports (Basel). 2016;4(1):14. — Study of professional pitchers in the United States. Source of the statements that pitching relies heavily on the ATP-PCr system during delivery, is followed by roughly 20–30 seconds of aerobic recovery between pitches, and places a relatively low demand on the aerobic energy system. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5968933/
3. Thomas DT, Erdman KA, Burke LM. Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dietitians of Canada, and the American College of Sports Medicine: nutrition and athletic performance. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. 2016;116(3):501–528. — Joint position stand of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (United States), Dietitians of Canada (Canada) and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM, United States). Source of the 3–5, 5–7 and 6–10 g/kg/day carbohydrate tiers, 1.2–2.0 g/kg/day protein, the 1–4 g/kg pre-event meal one to four hours before exercise over 60 minutes, the 30–60 g/h range for “stop and start” sports and up to 90 g/h beyond 2.5–3 hours, the 36–48 h 10–12 g/kg carbohydrate-loading protocol for events over 90 minutes of sustained or intermittent exercise, the 1–1.2 g/kg/h speedy-refuelling figure and 0.25–0.3 g/kg post-exercise protein, the avoidance of high-fat/protein/fibre pre-event choices, the >2% body-weight fluid-deficit statement, the 0.3–2.4 L/h sweat-rate range, 1 kg of body mass ≈ 1 L of sweat, the ~50 mmol/L (~1 g/L) average sweat sodium, sodium’s role in fluid retention, the cramping statement, and over-drinking as the primary cause of hyponatraemia. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26920240/
4. Convertino VA, Armstrong LE, Coyle EF, Mack GW, Sawka MN, Senay LC Jr, Sherman WM. American College of Sports Medicine position stand. Exercise and fluid replacement. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 1996;28(1):i–vii. — Position stand of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM, United States). Source of the 30–60 g/h carbohydrate figure for intense exercise lasting longer than an hour, the 600–1,200 ml/h of a 4–8% carbohydrate solution, and the 0.5–0.7 g of sodium per litre of water recommendation for exercise lasting longer than an hour. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9303999/
5. McDermott BP, Anderson SA, Armstrong LE, et al. National Athletic Trainers’ Association position statement: fluid replacement for the physically active. Journal of Athletic Training. 2017;52(9):877–895. — Position statement of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA, United States). Source of “performance was consistently reduced when hypohydration met or exceeded 2% body mass loss”, “heart rate increases 3 to 5 beats per minute for every 1% decrease in body mass”, and the finding that hypohydration greater than 1% compromised cognitive function including task performance, short-term memory and mood state. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5634236/
6. Baker LB. Sweating rate and sweat sodium concentration in athletes: a review of methodology and intra/interindividual variability. Sports Medicine. 2017;47(Suppl 1):111–128. — Industry source: the author is employed by the Gatorade Sports Science Institute, a division of PepsiCo, Inc. (United States), as the paper itself declares. Cited only for the descriptive range of whole-body sweat sodium concentration, approximately 10–70 mmol/L. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5371639/
7. Wittbrodt MT, Millard-Stafford M. Dehydration impairs cognitive performance: a meta-analysis. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 2018;50(11):2360–2368. — Meta-analysis of 33 studies. Impairment was greater above 2% body-mass loss than below it, with attention, executive function and motor coordination the domains most affected and reaction time the least affected. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29933347/
8. Baker LB, Rollo I, Stein KW, Jeukendrup AE. Acute effects of carbohydrate supplementation on intermittent sports performance. Nutrients. 2015;7(7):5733–5763. — Industry source: three of the four authors are affiliated with the Gatorade Sports Science Institute, a division of PepsiCo, Inc. (United States). Source of the finding that carbohydrate at ~30–60 g/h has a consistent beneficial effect on skill performance in soccer (football) but mixed results in basketball and racquet sports, and that studies to date have found very few beneficial effects on attention and response time. The cognitive claim is cross-checked against the independent meta-analysis at reference 9. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4517026/
9. Yang J, Han Q, Liu Q, et al. Effects of carbohydrate drinks ingestion on executive function in athletes: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology. 2023;14:1183460. — Meta-analysis of 10 randomised controlled trials; part-funded by the National Key R&D Program of China and by BYHEALTH Co. Ltd, a Chinese nutrition-supplement company, with no commercial conflicts declared. Concluded that carbohydrate taken before or during exercise was not significantly effective in reducing the post-exercise decline in executive function. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10448191/
10. Warren CD, Szymanski DJ, Landers MR. Effects of three recovery protocols on range of motion, heart rate, rating of perceived exertion, and blood lactate in baseball pitchers during a simulated game. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2015;29(11):3016–3025. — Source of the finding that blood lactate concentrations after pitching in simulated games were never high enough to cause skeletal muscle fatigue and decrease pitching velocity. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25051002/
11. Iio Y, Kozai H, Tanaka M, et al. Survey of nutritional intake status in college baseball players. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. 2025;22(1):2459090. — 92 male college baseball players at a Japanese university, surveyed in October 2022. Source of the median energy intake of about 2,077 kcal/day and median carbohydrate of about 290 g/day, and the conclusion that the group showed deficiencies in energy, protein, fat and carbohydrate. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11792141/
12. Mountjoy M, Ackerman KE, Bailey DM, et al. 2023 International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) consensus statement on Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs). British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2023;57(17):1073–1097. — Consensus statement of the International Olympic Committee (IOC, international). Source of the REDs definition, its application to both female and male athletes, the listed outcomes (energy metabolism, reproductive function, musculoskeletal health, immunity, glycogen synthesis, cardiovascular and haematological health, impaired well-being, increased injury risk and decreased sports performance), and the indicators cited here: bone stress injuries, low testosterone in males, amenorrhoea in females, mood disturbance and reduced sleep quality. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37752011/

This is general educational information, not medical, dietary or coaching advice. The sports-nutrition figures here are drawn from established consensus and are framed as population-level guides — individual needs vary widely with body size, position, conditions, gut tolerance and health, and are best personalised with a qualified professional. Anyone with a health condition, a history of disordered eating, or who is pregnant or postpartum, or who suspects under-fuelling, stress fractures, menstrual disruption or RED-S, should consult a sports physician or registered dietitian before making changes. See our Terms for more.

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