Somewhere between the protein powder ads on their feed and the calorie-tracking apps their mates use, teenagers have been sold the idea that eating for sport is complicated.
It isn't. A growing 14-year-old training three times a week needs exactly none of the things the supplement industry wants to sell them. What they need is food — more of it than most parents expect, at the right times, from a short list of categories you already have in your kitchen.
Here's the framework we teach every teen who comes through Young Knights.
Rule one: they probably need more food, not less
This is the single biggest thing parents get wrong, usually with the best intentions. A teenager who is growing AND training is running two energy-hungry projects at once. Under-fuelling doesn't make them leaner — it makes them flat in sessions, slower to recover, moodier at home, and more likely to get injured.
Signs your teen athlete is under-fuelled: always tired, plateauing in training, getting every cold going around, struggling to concentrate at school in the afternoon. The fix is rarely complicated. It's usually breakfast and a bigger lunch.
Rule two: build every meal around protein
Protein is the raw material for the muscle, bone and tissue a training teen is building. The target is easy to remember: a palm-sized serve of protein at every meal. Eggs, chicken, beef, fish, yoghurt, milk, beans, cheese — anything works.
Most teens eat almost no protein at breakfast (cereal, toast, juice) and then wonder why they're starving by 10am. Swapping to eggs on toast, Greek yoghurt with fruit, or even a milk-based smoothie changes their whole day.
And no, they don't need protein powder. A glass of milk has about the same protein as a scoop of powder, costs less, and comes with calcium a growing skeleton actually uses. Powder isn't dangerous — it's just unnecessary, and we'd rather teens learn to eat first.
Rule three: carbs are fuel, not the enemy
Somewhere along the way, teenagers picked up adult diet-culture fear of carbs. For a teen athlete, that fear is completely misplaced. Carbohydrate is the fuel for every sprint, jump and rep they do.
- Before training: a banana, a sandwich, or a bowl of cereal an hour or two beforehand means they actually have something in the tank.
- After training: a proper meal with carbs and protein within a couple of hours. Spaghetti bolognese after a session is genuinely close to ideal sports nutrition.
- Game day: nothing new, nothing fancy. A normal breakfast, a familiar lunch, water through the day.
Rule four: water first, and mostly water only
Most teens are mildly dehydrated most of the time, and it shows up as fatigue and poor concentration before they ever feel thirsty. A water bottle that goes to school and comes home empty is the goal.
Sports drinks have a real job — but that job is long, hot tournament days with multiple games, not a 45-minute gym session. For everything we do at Young Knights, water wins. Energy drinks are a hard no for teenagers: that much caffeine in a developing nervous system helps nothing and hurts sleep, which is where all the actual progress happens.
The best supplement for a teenage athlete is a second helping of dinner and nine hours of sleep.
What about treats, takeaway, and the food they actually want?
Here's where we differ from the internet: we don't teach restriction, and we'd ask you not to either. A teen who trains hard, eats protein at most meals and drinks mostly water can absolutely have hot chips with their mates after Saturday sport. That's not failure — that's a normal, healthy relationship with food.
The teens who get in trouble are the ones taught that foods are "good" or "bad", who then swing between strictness and blowouts. We talk about food the same way we talk about training: most things in the plan, nothing off-limits, consistency over perfection.
If you ever hear your teen talking about cutting whole food groups, skipping meals to change how they look, or following an influencer's extreme protocol — that's a conversation worth having early, and we're always happy to back you up from the coaching side.
A normal day that works
To make this concrete, here's what a solid day looks like for a 15-year-old training with us after school. Nothing weighed, nothing tracked:
- Breakfast: eggs on toast, glass of milk. Or Greek yoghurt, muesli and a banana.
- Recess: a sandwich or a couple of muesli bars — something, not nothing.
- Lunch: the biggest meal they'll cooperate with. Chicken wrap and fruit beats a packet of chips and a juice box by a mile.
- Before training (3:30ish): banana, or peanut butter on toast.
- Dinner: whatever the family eats — meat or fish, vegetables, rice or pasta or potatoes. Seconds are fine. Seconds are often the point.
- Before bed: milk, yoghurt or a bowl of cereal if they're hungry. Growing bodies often are.
That's it. No powders, no apps, no stress at the dinner table.
The bottom line
Feed them enough, anchor every meal with protein, don't fear carbs, pour water, and keep food relaxed. A teen who learns these habits at 14 carries them for life — and that's worth more than any supplement stack ever sold.
Nutrition and recovery education is built into the Young Knights program, so your teen hears this from their coach as well as from you. Curious what the rest of a session covers? Have a look at what a teen session actually looks like, or book a free session and see it live.