{"id":10588,"date":"2023-05-22T14:05:42","date_gmt":"2023-05-22T13:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bjsm\/?p=10588"},"modified":"2023-05-22T14:05:42","modified_gmt":"2023-05-22T13:05:42","slug":"managing-ramadan-on-the-move-perspectives-from-the-african-nations-cup-qualifiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bjsm\/2023\/05\/22\/managing-ramadan-on-the-move-perspectives-from-the-african-nations-cup-qualifiers\/","title":{"rendered":"Managing Ramadan on the move: perspectives from the African Nations Cup Qualifiers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Personal perspectives on facilitating optimal performance with the Egyptian Men\u2019s National Football team<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My background with \u201cThe Pharaohs\u201d<\/h4>\n

Since 2015, I have been the head of sports medicine at the Egyptian Football Association (EFA). Being Egyptian myself, it gives me a lot of pride to be able to plan and provide advice to the technical staff to maintain the maximal performance for our players. Egypt has a long history in international football, playing in three World Cups and being the first African nation to play at a World Cup in 1934. Many people are now more familiar with Egypt thanks to a true global superstar (Mohammed Salah) playing regularly for Egypt.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ramadan and performance<\/h4>\n

Ramadan is the holy month in which all Muslims undertake fasting from food, drink, and sexual activity from dawn until sunset. It is one of the five pillars of Islam and is a spiritual time that is a crucial part of the faith of the 1.9 billion Muslims on the planet (Husain et al., 2020). Much of the available literature related to Ramadan and performance reports an impairment of performance of athletes during this time of fasting (DeLang et al., 2022), with altered nutrition and sleeping patterns suggested as possible attributable factors (Nakhostin-Roohi & Barmaki, 2012). More awareness of the effect of Ramadan on the fasting athlete is now available, including a <\/span>recent BJSM blog<\/span><\/a> (<\/span>The Ramadan fasting athlete; competing in good health and for optimum performance<\/em>).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since starting my role with the EFA, I have worked with our national team during Ramadan on two previous occasions. The first was in 2017 during the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualifying games, and then again during our preparation camp prior to the FIFA World Cup in 2018. Although Egypt was eliminated in the 1<\/span>st<\/span> round of the 2018 World Cup, as a staff we were able to implement a successful physical performance program (despite all of our World Cup preparations being undertaken in Ramadan). In this blog, I reflect on maintaining optimal performance during Ramadan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Managing multiple challenges<\/h4>\n

More recently, I worked with the EFA at our AFCON qualification games in March 2023 during Ramadan. During a 9-day period, we played two games (home and away) and made a 9,000km round trip to play the away fixture during Ramadan. Aside from the implications of travel itself, the destination country of Malawi had recently experienced a cholera outbreak and the country had been affected by <\/span>a natural disaster<\/span><\/a> (\u201cCyclone Freddy\u201d) that took the lives of hundreds of people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To manage these challenges, we centered our approach on thorough planning and clear communication. Prior to and during the 9-day camp, the medical team had a series of regular meetings with the head coach, technical staff, team manager, and team captain (who was a central point of this process). This was kick-started by a PowerPoint presentation to this group (see Figure 1), which explained in detail more about all of these challenges and how we could collectively deal with them in an optimal manner.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Figure 1: Example of presentation slide used by medical staff\u00a0<\/span><\/h6>\n

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Adaptations to our schedules<\/h4>\n

To best manage nutrition and hydration, we divided the 9-day international camp into 3 blocks:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n