'Best fuel’ to get the ‘best performance’ – Ollie Hynd on importance of nutrition

Ollie Hynd has explained the importance of nutrition and how it provides fuel to allow athletes to get the ‘best performance’.

Having recently retired, Hynd is now giving back to the sport after achieving his swimming teacher qualifications.

But during his time as a professional athlete, he was a three-time Paralympic champion, four-time world champion, six-time European champion and also a Commonwealth champion.

Now, aged 28, Hynd reflected on how having the right nutrition can be ‘sometimes more important’ than anything else.

He said: “A lot of the time people in sport think training is the number one aspect, which obviously it is, but nutrition is incredibly important too.

Nutrition often overlooked

“You can do all the training in the world, you can train all day and all night, but if you’re not recovering properly and efficiently it means nothing. And nutrition is a huge part of that.

“For me, it was about generally eating clean and making sure that I’m giving my body everything it needs to do the necessary training.

“Obviously as swimmers, we have massive training loads, so first and foremost it’s important to keep you healthy and things like that.

“I think nutrition is something that’s often overlooked but it can be equally, if not sometimes more important, than actual training itself. And that’s because it gives you that fuel.

“If you think of yourself as a race car, you want to put the best fuel in the car as possible to get the best performance. And I kind of saw nutrition as a similar thing when I was competing.”

You can find some top nutritional tips, which can apply to all aquatic sports, from performance nutritionist, Laura Salmon, here.