Carbohydrate for team-sport athletes
Team sport — soccer, hockey, basketball, rugby
For a moderate training load — around an hour a day — the published range is 5 to 7 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight per day. This page uses 5 g/kg, the bottom of that range, which suits a normal training week rather than a heavy block or a match day.
Your number
About 350 g of carbohydrate a day.
5 g per kg of body weight. A starting point for a typical training week, not a prescription — a hard week runs higher and a rest day runs lower.
Why this differs from the ordinary recommendation
Team sports drain glycogen in a different pattern from distance work: repeated sprints burn it in bursts, and the tank still empties by the end of a match.
The classic second-half drop-off — slower repeated sprints, worse decisions — tracks glycogen depletion more closely than it tracks general fitness.
Because the requirement scales with body weight, a 95 kg forward and a 65 kg winger have genuinely different targets on the same training programme.
Figures from the American College of Sports Medicine, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and Dietitians of Canada — joint position stand, Nutrition and Athletic Performance (2016). Ranges are given at the conservative end — see the note on each number above.
Where this stops being useful
A match day and a rest day are not the same day, and this figure is neither. Treat it as the middle of a normal week; fuelling around competition specifically is worth a conversation with a sports dietitian.
Healthy Squirrel gives nutrition estimates, not medical advice.
Track it without doing the arithmetic
Healthy Squirrel has a team sport training mode that sets these targets from your body weight, then fills them in as you log food — alongside every other vitamin and mineral. It's free, there's no account needed to start, and nothing is sold.
Open Healthy Squirrel, then choose Team sport under Training in Settings.
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