Aspiring Athletes: 3 Nutrition Practices to Better Enhance High Performance Training

Whether you're preparing for a marathon, enjoy triathlons or find a passion for intense cardio classes, high performance training requires a level of dedication and commitment beyond the typical workout. While there are countless perspectives on the best supplements and diets, it's more important to adopt healthy habits for long-term success. As a Division I student athlete, I believe it's important to be consistent with your nutrition in order to prevent injuries, optimize your performance and find athletic success in the long run (no pun intended!).

Rachel Paul's article, How To Build a To-Go Lunch, gives meal prep tips for fueling with a busy schedule. When people have a jam-packed week, it's often hard to eat the right foods for a high intensity workout. Paul puts her formula to use by suggesting quick and easy recipes to make the night before a busy day. She also organizes her recipes by showing the health benefit of each ingredient. Through these simple meals, it's easier than ever to stay energized and prepare for a high intensity workout.

Image from @fuelupnu located on Instagram

And what about hydration? In Andy Blow's article, How Much Dehydration Can You Tolerate Before Your Performance Suffers?, he busts the myths and uses data-backed information to show the effects of dehydration. Blow talks about the relationship between bodyweight and sweat-loss, and analyzes the "threshold" of hydration based on the intensity of performance. But the best part of his article? The free online sweat test. Here, you can learn the best hydration regime for your training, which you can later refine through trial and error. 

Based on my experience and review of these two articles, I have developed three nutrition practices that will optimize your performance training. 

Action Recommendations: 

1. Maximize your Preparation – While it's easy to skip meals due to a busy schedule, it's important to plan ahead and intentionally select the most beneficial nutrients for an energized training session. 
2. Hydrate to Perform Great – Carefully track your water intake before, during and after a heavy training session; Track your fluid intake on an app, refill your bottle as soon as it's empty, and remember to take gulps every 15 minutes of a workout! 
3. Recovery is Serious – Strategize your nutrition immediately after training by eating a well-balanced meal, replenishing your fluids and setting goals for your next session. 

So the next time you're looking to purchase the newest and Instagram-worthy fitness trend, remember these essential nutrition practices for a healthy and strong training session.

Lily Katzman 
I am a current senior at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism where I'm majoring in Journalism and minoring in Spanish and Integrated Marketing Communications. I'm also a student-athlete on the Women's Field Hockey team. I have a passion for the sports industry, and I'm always looking for ways to bridge my journalism experience with creating important brand narratives. Connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter.  

Makeup Artists: 3 changes that will drive significant traffic to your YouTube Channel

Among all the influencers that are trending on social platform, a group of them has been getting most attention since the beginning. They are the makeup artists that share their routines or favorite products to the public. Since there are no professional classes for applying makeup, a lot of people rely on these videos to learn more about beauty and makeup and I'm of them. I found these two videos that are very helpful and, as a a graduate student studying Integrated Marketing Communications in Medill, Northwestern University, I would also like to share my take on them.

Wesley Benjamin Carter often shared amazing makeup style on his YouTube Channel. He is genuinely an artist. In this video, Natural Male Makeup Tutorial, he shared a more natural and everyday style. He talked a multiple of his favorite products and his routine in applying them. The products he talked about are all quite affordable and I believe it's very useful for any guy trying to learn how to apply an everyday style make up.

Image Source:  https://www.cakapcakap.com/mengulik-tentang-serba-serbi-influencer/

The second video is by EMAN. In this video, The Best Makeup for Work / School/ Everyday, she introduced her make up routine that is suitable for work or school. She focused on the needs of this group of people, that is they need their makeup to stay on for an entire day. As this video was published in the beginning of fall, she also introduced colors that are suitable for fall weather and outfits. 

I learned a lot just from watching these to video. But as an audience and a student in marketing, I believe there are improvements that can be made which will further increase the traffic to their channels.

• What is it?: List the product's name in the video instead only in the intro area will make video easier to follow.
• What about me?: Everyone has different skin situations, so keep in mind to make differentiate tips for different group of audiences. 
• Hong long will it take?: The audience would be interested to know how long the routine will actually take (minus the introduction process), so maybe include the time consumed somewhere. 

Makeup tutorial video is a highly competitive market. Thus, if you are looking to become a makeup artist YouTuber, make sure you keep these three points in mind.

Richard is currently studying in the Integrated Marketing Communications program at Medill, Northwestern University. He has great passion in branding and hope to make a career in marketing or advertising industry. Outside of school, Richard has great interest in photography. He believes taking photos is a way of sharing how he sees the world. He is also very fond of the fashion industry. He always stay on trend by following the latest styles and newly released collections. Learn more about him on his LinkedIn and Instagram.

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