Weeks after being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, my club team, Toronto Lynx, was planning to travel to New York for a soccer tournament. Not knowing a thing about Type 1 management for athletes, I decided to go and play regardless.
Looking back, what was really the highlight of that tournament for me, my first tournament as a diabetic, was inconsistency. I hadn’t been able to play well for long periods of time. I’d get on the field and be good for 15 minutes then completely gas out and become unfocused. I hadn’t been able to play a good full 45/90 minute game.
It wasn’t until later in my career when I realized that the inconsistency I was experiencing in my earlier days was because of my inability to properly prepare for games. Being new to diabetes, I never made the time before the game to manage my numbers in a focused and disciplined way. I simply would check to make sure I was not low, if I wasn’t then I’d play. I never took the correct steps that would insure my blood sugar to be at the desirable level for competition while staying safe.
Playing Varsity soccer for Ryerson University has made me become a lot more conscious of my preparation for games. I understand now how important it is to establish a pre-game routine that deals with T1 management. I’ve also realized how important it is to mentally prepare for games as well.
Here is my routine and how I generally prepare mentally and physically for games at home as a Type 1 Diabetic and Ryerson Ram (being away and on the road is different and has its own challenges). I arrived at this routine after much trial and error and learning from doing – this is one that seems to work for me, my body and and my position.
I increase the dosage of insulin with my pre- game meal slightly. I try to eat the last bigger meal 2 hours before the game
This is the part of my preparation that involves the management of T1.
High blood sugar makes you sluggish and unfocused. With me, I do whatever it takes to make sure that before the game I don’t start with numbers above 10.
For me, pre-game jitters have always pushed my blood sugar high. I figured out that what came with games; the nervousness, anxiousness, stress, adrenaline etc…caused my blood sugar to rise almost inevitably. Even though I would tell myself I was none of these things, my body thought otherwise.
There have been so many times that my blood sugar has spiked to numbers like 11 and 12 right before the game starts, even though an hour or so ago they were much lower.
I began testing out adding insulin with my meals before games and found that increasing my insulin dosage by 1 or 1 1/2 units put my blood sugar at around 7 before the game. This extra insulin covers for the emotional stress that drive my sugars up, this way I can enter the game at a stable number.
The lesson here is to really put your current preparation under scrutiny. Break it down and discover if you are taking the correct steps to ensure that you are at the blood sugar you need to be at. For me, increasing my pre-game dose of insulin works – it will probably be different for you. Early on, I was following conventional wisdom to carb-up before intense exercise, or a game, and I was doing so despite the evidence of the contrary – such was my fear of going low on the field. But then I realized that not only do I go high before the game, but because of the position I play as a winger and constant sprinting, my blood sugar shoots through the roof during the game as well. For other positions that don’t require a lot of sprinting, this may be different. That’s why it made sense to me to try and enter the game at a lower number, giving myself some room for blood sugar to rise without going to the levels that will make me unfocused and tired.
I clear myself from Diabetes
This involves the mental aspect of my preparation, as you can imagine it has a lot to do with calming my nerves, banishing fear and believing in myself.
I can never achieve optimal performance if all I’m ever thinking about is “I wonder what my blood sugar is right now?” In order for myself to play well I need to visualize myself succeeding and scoring, I need to focus on the game plan and the tactics. Unfortunately for me, thinking about my blood sugar levels takes away from this. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in the locker room listening to coaches game tactics and all I am thinking about in my head is “I wonder what my numbers are like ?” (sorry coach). In order to allow myself to focus before the game I need to get the management side out of way, this means that I put supreme importance in doing what it takes to make sure my numbers are from a 7-9 range before the game so I can clear my head and get ready for the task at hand.
I stay extremely positive
I always tell myself that I am going to have a great game or that I am going to score or set up my teammates, even though it sometimes doesn’t work like that, it puts me in the frame of mind that I need to be in. Often for me, factoring in diabetes with your preparation can be stressful- numbers don’t go your way, you’re high, you’re low, and now you’ve missed out on half the warm up. It happens to all of us, but keeping a positive attitude through all this ensures that the little annoyances that come with diabetes don’t carry over and affect your mental state before the game.
I always loved the quote: “we can’t control what happens to us but we can control what we make of what happens to us”.
I believe that preparation is key in life, with or without diabetes. From job interviews to athletics your ability to get your body and mind in the correct state that will allow you to perform at your best level is the determining factor to how well you carry out your task. For diabetics preparation becomes even more crucial because poor management of your blood sugar before the game/exercise can have serious affects on the way the next couple of hours will look, and possibly affect your health.
Everyone has their own way of preparing for activity/exercise/games – what’s yours?
Turning Type 1 Into Being Number 1 