BarcelonaMaría Antonia Lizarraga, Barça’s head of nutrition, does not shoot penalties, but she is a key piece in understanding the process of sporting excellence that the Barça club has been designing around its athletes for years. “It would be naive to think that a team has won or lost by nutrition, but it’s rare to see a top-tier team that doesn’t have a specialist in this subject because everyone considers it important,” he sums up. The evolution of its sector is fascinating. “We consider nutrition not only as an act to ingest energy, avoid fatigue and increase performance, but as something that can be trained every day, as a value that is part of the profile we want a Barça athlete to have. For us it is of interest to instill a nutritional education, which is much more than what they eat on the day of the match. When the player internalizes that nutrition is important, he knows how to choose what to eat. It is an aspect that goes beyond taking care of itself and serves to complement other aspects. Initially, the nutrition area focused on advising the first team to aid in recovery or hydration. Now, instead, we want a seal of the house to be noticed. Health and nutrition as one of its pillars must be part of the values that an athlete must have “, he explains.
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