World class Olympic athletes train at a whole different level than most. Because the Olympics come only once every four years and competition is so fierce, these athletes look for every edge they can get. Some Olympians have discovered that vitamin D helps in their training regimen by helping them recover faster from the rigors of world class conditioning.

Why recovery is the most important time of an athletes day

The most critical time for an athlete is the time she spends outside the gym recovering from training or competition. The more she recovers, the better she can perform at the next game or practice. Insufficient recovery leads to decreased performance, injury, and if enough fatigue accumulates, mental or physical burn-out. One of the easiest ways to accelerate recovery time is supplementing with Vitamin D.

Vitamin D was used to help 2002 German Olympic athletes

Vitamin D expert, John Cannell, MD, quotes an unpublished German study about how Olympic level athletes benefited from vitamin D supplementation generated special UV tanning beds.

The researchers reported reduced lactic-acid build up, decreased pulse rate (indicating increased oxygen uptake and utilization) and a clearly increased athletic output on all of the endurance tests in the irradiated athletes. The paper did not mention the exact percentage of increased athletic output; however, the following is stated in the summation of findings.

“On the whole, it may be concluded that the continuous and repetitive exposure of the body to sub-erythemal (that’s technical wording saying they did not spend enough time in the tanning bed to get pink) UV radiation optimizes the performance capabilities of top-level competitive athletes, as well as alleviating the occurrence of recovery time from minor injuries and infections.”

Vitamin D does more than help absorb calcium

For a long time, absorbing calcium was thought to be vitamin D’s only role. However, a pattern of association being uncovered in past and current research is showing that the “sunlight vitamin’s” effect goes way beyond assisting the body’s assimilation of calcium.

Why you shouldn’t wait for Vitamin D to become mainstream

It’s going to be a while before the linkage between vitamin D and athletic performance is accepted as a fact and Gatorade starts putting it in their product, but why shouldn’t you benefit now. Simply adding 5,000 iu of vitamin D a day to your diet inexpensive, extremely safe, and benefit you on and off the court with more endurance. Its already been proven to help build more fast twitch muscle, facilitate quicker recovery from minor injuries, and help strengthen immunity from cold and flus.

TAKE ACTION! Start taking 5,000 iu of vitamin D a day and schedule a 25 Hydroxy vitamin D test with your doctor to make sure your levels are in the 50-60’s.