David Nelson chat through Reditt

Yeah, I've read about his volunteer work in Haiti building houses and how he joined with none other than Jay Feeley to invest into the infrastructure there creating some clubs for the youth there. It's outstanding work he's doing and he has been a great inspiration for many to help the people there.

From a player standpoint, he's a full year more healed from his injury - maybe we'll see a little more explosiveness regained.

 

Thanks for posting! Read everything he replied to, well worth the read. Wish i could have gotten in on it tho. It was cool seeing fans from just about every team showing respect, and thanks for him humbly doing an AMA with fans.

 

I think top 5 may be a stretch but we can be a top 15-16 offense I think we'll be a playoff team.

I really like Nelson, I am excited to see what he can do fully healthy and a year in this system w/ a more confident QB.

 

I like Nelson too, he's like a taller version of Cotchery, great hands and routes, and uses his body well for separation. Just a tad too fragile.

 

I like Nelson, but it's interesting that he said he doesn't care about eating right - he eats what he wants. He obviously works out a lot but the guy is a stick figure, maybe if he followed a strict eating regiment he wouldn't be made of glass....

 

A lot of pro athletes eat like shit actually. They are notorious for it. That includes Olympians.

 

Olympians from Western countries, yes. The Russian system (copied by China) puts athletic kids in Olympic schools and trains them relentlessly, 99% don't make the cut, and every aspect of life is carefully controlled by their owners coaches.

As we go along, I think we will see NFL teams use technology to track things like sleep, as they're doing in Philly. Then on to food. Once they realize it can give you an edge, all the other teams will do it.

It's crazy that every NFL team doesn't have a full-time sports nutritionist crafting individualized meal plans to optimize each athlete. Why would you not want that edge?

It just seems wasteful and stupid for an elite athlete to eat poorly. It's like a physicist huffing paint. But, poor eating is just a reality of life, even among top athletes.

 

And then there's the Babe. Grew up in a ghetto on a bar stool in his pop's bar.

Two 20 win season as a pitcher. 714 HRs during the 'dead-ball' era when baseballs rarely left the park. Never did a sit up, lifted a weight, or ate anything but pub food. Oh and pussy. LOTS of pussy. Had a different girl and favorite tavern in every town.

 

He should of said that with a full offseason, you'll get a full Nelson.

 

First off, very good post Esq. I'm not a nutritionist but for my field I was required to take high level nutrition courses so here's a few thought I have

1. Yes, it is surprising teams don't work closely with a nutritionist and I agree, I think this will change very soon. However, this is America - not communist China or Russia. American athletes, likely with the support of the public, will never have their lives controlled to the point where they are being forced to follow a diet against their will.

2. These athletes are in the top percentile in terms of human performance. They will perform well regardless of their diet.

3. They are expending many calories per day. At a certain point it doesn't matter what you put in your body, all that is needed is macronutrients to replenish depleted stores. This is especially true post workout. Also along these lines is that football players do not need to worry about weight classes. In fact they are usually trying to add mass thus high caloric foods can be beneficial.

4. More impactful to athletic performance is pre workout nutrition and sleep. By that I mean how rested the athlete is and what they eat / how much they eat before they workout and how many minutes prior to the workout the meal is consumed.

5. In the long run, proper nutrition is important. Healthy diets correlate strongly with prolonged lifespans. Maintaining a balanced diet over the course of a long career certainly may have benefits also. Providing athletes with nutritional assistance so they can maintain a healthy nutritional plan certainly can do no harm and may provide an edge. However this is impossible to quantitatively measure. It comes down to the individual athlete. Like I touched on above, most athletes at this level are so gifted that it does not really matter in the short term as long as they are getting enough energy to compete at the level they need to. This is why a power lifter for example may eat a whole package of Oreos in one sitting as a snack and be fine, in fact it is helping achieve a goal of caloric excess. Remember there is no difference between 1000 calories of lettuce and 1000 calories of cookies - a calorie is a calorie. The real danger to doing this is the long term damage to the arteries that will result.

6. Many deficiencies is an athletes diet can be covered by supplementation. Personally, I believe that one day we will have evidence to say acquiring vitamins and minerals from natural sources is superior to a pill. I believe this because there are many phytochemicals and other molecules in natural foods that interact with each other that are not present in the pills. However, these interactions occur on such a minute level, science has just not discovered how to see how these components fully work yet.

From my own experience, athlete testimony, and just common sense I would say proper nutrition is very important and will help anybody feel better but so far most of the evidence we have in support of healthy eating is related to the long term benefits; such as reducing risk of complications from heart disease (I word it that way because we all have heart disease to a degree: fatty streaks begin appearing on arterial walls in us when we are still children, but our diet of course plays a huge role in whether these streaks develop into blockages one day).

Skill and natural ability is most important - the Babe Ruth example above is a good point. However the argument is that good nutrition can provide an edge when it comes to athletes of similar skills and ability. Babe played in an era before exercise science even existed. Most players ate whatever they wanted and drank alcohol in excess. Would babe be as dominant today if he had the same lifestyle? Maybe not. Would he have performed even greater with optimal nutrition? Maybe. Is he a bad example for other athletes to follow? There has arguably never been a more naturally gifted player so I would say yes.

Anyway, apologies for the short novel. It's an interesting subject to me. We're still learning a lot about nutrition and how the body works. Physiology and exercise science is a very new field when it comes to the sciences. No doubt it's implementations and influence in professional sports will only grow.

 

I said it an another thread, but I think he's in for a big season. He had a real good rapport with geno toward the end of the year and if he can stay healthy there is no reason he can't be a very solid #2.