With summer on the horizon, all of Texas Tech's spring athletic programs will join football and basketball to enter the summer offseason, arguably the most important time of year for athletes to recover, make changes to their bodies, and prepare their bodies for next season.
And while strength and conditioning is a major key in making strides forward, nutrition is likely the most overlooked factor in improving and maintaining athletic performance.
To get a closer look at just what Texas Tech is doing to ensure their athletes are meeting nutrition needs, we spoke with head dietician Dayna McCutchin.
This is part I of our Q&A series with her where we cover just what it means to be the head dietitian for all of Tech's athletes, what goes into the process of caring for them, and how she hopes to make them better for the future.
First, how did you get into sports nutrition and eventually end up here at Tech as the head dietitian?
“I started off private practice with a surgeon here in town, and through that I started to get individual consults with patients who were involved with athletics. Most of them were triathlete type of athletes, but they were coming back. Just a few simple changes were able to help them shave times off their events. I really got a feel for that and then just started to do nutrition presentations to local high school athletics, started to get a lot more individual athletes, and I just fell in love with it. They were excited and willing to make new changes to get them better.”
“I’m extremely competitive, so I just felt like I was having a small hand in giving them the tools that they needed to get better. I really just started to do some research on if anyone was here (at Tech) full time. I’m from here, born and raised to watch Tech athletics my whole life. I’m an alumni, have both an undergraduate and master’s degree from here, and I was always passionate about this area, attended as many athletic events as I could. So, like I said, I started to research, saw that they didn’t have anybody full time, so I really just started cold calling people trying to get my foot in the door, and it was a long process. I think it was about eight months before I really got in to meet with Judi Henry, Tory (Stephens), and Kirby (Hocutt) finally called back one day, and it was even a few months after he’d called that we really got the ball rolling. When Coach Kingsbury came in, it was a top priority to him to grow this area and make it the best we could. From there it’s really just taken off.”
I think some fans believe they have a general idea of what you and your staff do to try and help athletes with their diet and nutrition, but what exactly is the depth and detail that you go into when it comes to helping each individual team and athlete?
“We have over 400 athletes on 17 teams, so we’re very fortunate that we have an additional dietician in Kylie Fulton who helps us, so we’ve literally just split the teams, and we do that based on season so we don’t have the same teams in season at the same time. So, when she’s going full time with basketball, I’m going full time with football. We can really give them more one on one attention that way. Our rule of them is that if they’re lifting or eating, we try to be present. If they’re lifting at 6 a.m., we’re here providing the pre-workout, making sure that they’re getting the fueling station items that they need to have a successful lift. Then we’ve got a really good job of making sure that each athlete, whether they’re weight maintenance, weight gain, or weight loss, gets the proper nutrition following the workout to optimize recovery, facilitate recovery. That’s huge, cause you can lift all day long, but everything you do in a weight room or on a field tends to be catabolic on the body, so it’s our job to give an athlete everything they need to get back up and ready to go. They may have practice with a turnaround of four hours, so if they’re not fueled properly, they’re more injury prone, more likely to just not have a good day on the field, and over time, it’s just wear and tear on the body, so it’s just really important that we educate the athlete in the present to be able to facilitate those proper items."
“We track weights daily, and that’s huge for us. If an athlete has practice and has lost more than three percent of their body weight, the athletic training staff will flag them, let us know, and we’ll take extra measures to make sure they’re ready to go for the next day. Once again, if they’re dehydrated, they’re more prone to injury, so we want to be sure we’re taking care of them nutritionally, be sure that’s taken off the table. But really, just tracking their daily weights and meet with every individual athlete one on one, that allows us to identify the athlete’s needs. They may have a food allergy, may have preferences where they don’t like particular items, so that’s important for when if they’re on the road, we’re providing them foods and picking out foods that they like. Then, when we’re doing recommendations for them or bringing in foods to provide to that team’s facility, it’s the items that they really like, cause in a perfect world, they’re all eating quinoa, kale, and super greens, right? But at the end of the day, that’s not how a lot of these athletes were raised and not what they’re accustomed to eating, so we really try to do a good job of hitting those wholesome foods they really, really like, and then still incorporating healthy items and educating them on how eating these fruits and vegetables are going to give you more antioxidants to facilitate recovery, help you recover faster, help you to not become sick all the time. A lot of them, it just takes time to adapt, to make changes, to help them be better, so we try to do it, once again, by giving them what they like, what they’re accustomed to, and then just building on top of that over time.”
How do you go about achieving those goals?
“We get a lump sum of money from our gracious donors, and from that money we try to take care of our athletes in the best way we know how. Top priorities are making sure that every meal – breakfast, lunch, and dinner – is provided to them, made sure that it’s available, and to make sure they know what to eat and when to eat it. So, that was top priority first. When the NCAA changed the rules and allowed us to be able to do more things like that, it was ‘Okay, how are we at Texas Tech going to implement this in the best way we know how with our athletes?’ That’s something else to realize, too. What Texas Tech is doing and what another school is doing may be totally different even though we have the same abilities. We’ve been very fortunate that if we put it on paper, we budget it out, see the cost, show them the importance, the administration has been completely supportive. Very, very rarely do we do not do something that we tell them is needed. If we can’t do it at 100 percent capacity, the answer is very rarely no. It’s ‘okay, we can’t do it at this amount, so what can we change to provide it a little bit with the intent to grow.’”
What does the average day look like for you and your athletes? What’s the schedule and availability like for them to get the snacks and meals they need to meet the goals you all have set for them?
“They come in, and all athletes get a hot A.M. snack in the morning. It’s conveniently located in whatever weight room they train in. That’s another thing, too. So many campuses have options for their athletes, it may be all the way across campus. So, if they’re lifting at six, have to be in class at eight, have to be ready to go, they’re not going to be able to utilize that, so we’re able to have that available in the weight room for them. That also gives them the opportunity to have snacks between classes, and then 10:30 to 1:30 is our training table. It’s located right in front of the Marsha Sharp Center, so very centrally located for most of our athletes. It’s right in front of a bus stop, so that’s more easy for them to access. It’s also a specifically designed menu for them to facilitate athletes.”
“So, a volleyball player and a lineman aren’t going to have the same nutritional needs, but there’s a very wide variety (of options). The way we label and provide the food items to athletes, they’re able to utilize it and build a plate that’s tailored specifically to that athlete’s needs. Then, we have an ability to provide an additional meal. We don’t have the funding to provide it for all athletes at this time, so we categorize that for our top five energy expenditure sports, so the five that burn the most calories training-wise. So, we provide an additional meal to those five sports with the hopes of adding two additional teams each year. So, by the school year of 18-19 or 19-20, actually all of our student athletes will be able to utilize an additional meal, which is huge. That was just once again the NCAA’s way of saying ‘Okay, you feed your athletes the way you see fit to help them optimize performance.’ We’re able to do that.”
“It’s also dependent on the team on whether they need it in-house or we send them out and utilize money from an app at restaurants that we’ve pre-picked and items that we’ve pre-picked for them. So, that’s kind of nice, too, cause an athlete can go and do it when they need to versus forcing them to come in and utilize it. Soccer, for example, all trains in the morning, so it doesn’t make sense for them to come back up here in the afternoon. They can actually just go use it on an app when it’s convenient for them, so that’s nice.”
A few years ago, the NCAA changed some rules that removed all training table restrictions. Now that you have free reign to take care of whatever dietary needs your athletes might have at any time throughout the day, how have things changed?
“It’s huge. In the past I’d have an athlete that would have an extremely hard time gaining weight, and even if they were on full scholarship, which there are a lot of athletes who aren’t, it’s very hard for them to have the funding they need to purchase the items they need for us to meet their weight goals that we’re demanding of them. You throw in a training session where they might burn 800 to 1,200 calories, and then you throw in a practice where they may be burning 1,200 to 1,500 calories depending on the time of the year, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to reach those goals. So, really with all these rules being lifted on us, it’s given us the ability to be able to really just reach those student athletes’ needs, which is our top priority, obviously. I feel like we do a really good job and have the resources that’s able to provide that the most efficiently for them.”
