Northwestern University Athletics
Eat To Win
9/9/2014 12:00:00 AM | General
By: Skip Myslenski
It is a Friday morning and receiver Kyle Prater walks into Welsh-Ryan's N Club, where already any number of `Cats are deep into their breakfast. To his left is a smorgasbord of choices, a bountiful buffet that includes "Just Right Hot Oatmeal" and "Traditional Creamy Grits Cereal," a waffle bar and an array of fruit, a mound of turkey sausage and a cornucopia of yogurt and eggs cooked not in your mama's margarine, but in margarine made with olive oil. But before he can reach it, before he can even consider what he might get from it, he is greeted by Katie Knappenberger.
In June, the `Cats hired her as their sports dietician and throughout the previous half-hour, she has slalomed among the tables in this room and consulted with various players. Now, here, she asks Prater what he will be having for lunch later that day and then, when she learns it will be a deli sandwich, she lays out the meal he should eat. "I check in with her every morning and basically get a check list of things that I need for fueling in the game or a practice," he will later say. "This morning she was just making sure I was staying on top of things."
"What we're trying to do is check several nutrient boxes," Knappenberger herself will explain. "So he told me he was going to have a sandwich for lunch. So I know he's going to get his protein, his carbohydrates and a little bit of vegetable there. So what holes do we have to fill in now? That's where my recommendations came from, the stuff that he was going to get for lunch."
Now Prater, his tray filled with her recommendations, sits down at a table next to fellow receiver Miles Shuler, and soon enough Knappenberger joins them. Here she notices that Shuler has no liquid in front of him and that transforms her into a professor. "I like to teach the athletes," she will later say, recounting what she told Shuler, "that their bloodstream is like a highway and since our blood is mostly water, if we're well- hydrated, we kind of have a four-lane highway that (allows) oxygen and nutrients to get to our muscles during exercise.
"If we're dehydrated, then our bloodstream is like a one-lane highway, so it's going to take oxygen and nutrients a little longer to get to our muscles and get to our brain. So if we're well-hydrated before a game, it's a competitive advantage because we have a better ability to get oxygen and nutrients circulating in our body if we're more hydrated than our competition. It actually helps reaction time if you're well-hydrated."
"I play around a lot with Katie," the irrepressible Shuler will later say when asked about that moment. "When she asks me questions about food and stuff, I play around like I don't know what I'm saying. So she gives us information. This morning she asked if I was going to drink some water. Of course I was going to drink something. But I was messing around. That's why she sat down and gave us all that information. I didn't know the details like that. I knew staying hydrated was important. But I didn't know the details. So I actually learned something today."
Knappenberger, when she finishes informing Shuler, walks to a counter, grabs a cup, fills it with water, returns and places it by the player's food. He drinks it.
••••••
She was an athlete in high school and, at UW-LaCrosse, earned a bachelor's in athletic training. Then, Katie Knappenberger remembers, "I noticed that athletes had a lot of questions about nutrition and I just wanted to be as well-equipped to answer them as possible." That prompted her enroll at the University of Utah, where she earned a master's in nutrition with an emphasis in sports dietetics. "I found that my passion really lied there," she says, and so she was a willing recruit when the `Cats asked her to leave her job as a trainer at Daytona State College and take on her new role.
"It's a pretty new science. Probably over the last 10, 15 years, it's really blown up and we've seen a lot of nutrition research, particularly on athletes," she will explain on this Friday morning. "My job is to take that research and translate it to practical recommendations, like my comment on hydration. So it's relatively new, but it's picking up speed really fast because a lot of people are learning that in order to be the best you can be, you need to eat to win."
In her role she is often, as she was on this morning, a veritable den mother for the `Cats, hovering protectively around this metaphorical brood she is determined to aid. "If you don't check in with Katie, Katie comes and finds you," Shuler will say when asked if players do check in with her.
"She'll find you," Prater echoes with a broad grin. "But I think everybody goes out of their way to check in. They want to be healthy. They want to eat to win. She's done a great job. I think everybody's bought in."
Prater, for his part, had begun altering his diet before Knappenberger's hiring. Still, he says, "She really enhanced it."
"For me," picks up Shuler, "it's mainly how much I've been eating. She's been on top of me to eat more, to maintain my weight so I can feel good during the day. I wasn't a big breakfast person before. Now, I'm eating everything and I feel good. It makes a difference when you're on the field. You feel better than you did before. That teaches you, `OK. That's how I'm going to start eating so I can feel this way all the time.' When your body doesn't feel a certain way, you know what it is."
Have they dropped foods from their diet?
"I've probably picked up more than I've dropped," says Prater.
"I've dropped a lot," says Shuler. "McDonald's is now not in the equation anymore. Pizza. I can't eat that anymore."
"When you start eating healthy and then you change, switch up for awhile, you start feeling bad," adds Prater. "Your body recognizes this isn't healthy and then flushes it immediately. There's nothing wrong with having one cheeseburger. We talk to Katie about that. But at the same time it's having a balance, knowing this is what you need for performance."
"Eating is like your relationship with your girlfriend," concludes Shuler. "You know you're supposed to do the right things, eat the right things. When you eat the wrong things, it's like being in a fight with your girlfriend and you feel bad. It's not good for you. That's how I approach the whole eating aspect."
••••••
Katie Knappenberger sits down at the table now abandoned by Prater and Shuler. "In general, Northwestern students love to learn," she says when asked about her reception. "So if we can talk about the why and the science behind the food, and they understand how it's going to help them on game day and on training days, they're really receptive to it. They're very committed to the program and doing the best that they can. They're looking for every competitive advantage that they can and if it's there, they'll take it."
The players, then, regularly barrage her with questions, asking about foods like avocados and almonds, cajoling her to rank her favorite fruits and vegetables, discussing endlessly the 80-20 rule she constantly preaches. "The guys love to talk about 80-20," she says. "Eighty percent is eating for a purpose, eating to win, eating those healthy foods. Twenty percent is the treat foods. Just like other college students, they get their treats, and really there's no food that's off limits. It's just that there's a time and a place for cheeseburgers and french fries. Today (the day before a game) is not that day."
What day is?
"Generally as far away from exercise as we can get. They're going to play Saturday, they've got Saturday night to recover. So we want to recover with good, nutritious antioxidants. So after a game isn't the time for a cheeseburger either. Sunday, depending on how they feel, might be the time for that, or maybe Monday or Tuesday. But we try to keep it as far away from competition as possible."
It is now clear, on this morning, that there is an unimagined complexity to this new field she inhabits, and so she is finally asked what would most surprise people unfamiliar with it. "I think," she says, "people sometimes underestimate the role food can play as medicine, and the role it can play in disease prevention, and the role it can play in healing. I think a lot of people turn to ice and heat and stretching and athletic training, which is a very, very, very big part of that. But if we can utilize nutrition to heal, we can actually really speed that process up."
So someone has a tweaked hammy?
"We know," she now says, giving a deeper glimpse into her field's complexity, "that he's got some inflammation going on in there and we have some muscle fibers that need to be repaired. So we can use food to fight inflammation by choosing things like salmon, which has high Omega-3s; we can choose things like olive oil, walnuts would be great to get those Omega-3s in; lots of colorful fruits and vegetables to get in there with those antioxidants; then lean sources of protein to rebuild that muscle as strong as it can possibly be rebuilt."
••••••
One last anecdote, which reveals just how much Katie Knappenberger is now part of the Wildcats culture: She recently received a text from a player that asked, "Is Buffalo Wild Wings OK? What should I order?"
"You can make a good choice," she texted back. "Choose wings that are not breaded with the bone in and choose a sauce that is not creamy."
"I followed up with the player and he did that," she finally says. "So he's going to be ready for Saturday."
••••••
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