Mona Nemmer: Nutrition for Top Athletes

How can you improve players who are among the best of their generation? Soccer professionals whose performance data is recorded and analyzed daily, and who have largely adapted their lifestyle to the requirements of top-level sports? Where is there still potential for those few extra points that make the difference between second place and winning titles, cups, and championships?

When Jürgen Klopp thought about these questions, he made a decision that he later called the "best transfer of his life." He brought Mona Nemmer to FC Liverpool - that was eight years ago. Nemmer had previously worked for FC Bayern and the DFB; she is a nutritionist and holds the title "Head of Nutrition" in Klopp's team.

Jürgen Klopp brought Mona Nemmer to FC Liverpool

The trained nutritionist and trained cook developed a nutrition plan for the club, which follows only the question of how to optimize athletic performance through proper Nutrition When she came, two cooks and two women who served the food were taking care of the players' meals. On Mondays there was chicken, on Tuesdays Fish, Wednesday chicken again. Two cooks, two dishes, that was it.

Jürgen Klopp called Mona Nemmer the best signing of his life

By now, her team consists of 26 employees, providing not only the professionals but all teams down to the nine-year-olds with daily meals, but above all with valuable knowledge about what benefits the body and what harms it. To this end, Nemmer also had a 1200 square meter garden built, where potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, and fruit are grown.

The youth teams help with watering and weeding, learning early on what fruits, vegetables, and herbs can do for them. With the successes of the “Reds” – Champions League, Club World Cup, UEFA Super Cup – Nemmer's contribution became known, but she never gave interviews. She preferred to focus on her work rather than talking about it.

Mona Nemmer also wrote a book about her work

After eight years in Liverpool, the 40-year-old gave insight into her work with the book “Eating Like the Champions” (Piper Verlag). It is not about diet cuisine, or quick recipes or vegan feel-good dishes. Here it is about what provides energy, prevents injuries, and speeds up recovery. The technical term is "Performance Nutrition," and meat and fish as a source of protein are not frowned upon, nor are carbohydrates.

It is about what provides energy, prevents injuries, and speeds up recovery.

What makes office people fat and sluggish is the fuel for high-performance athletes. Nemmer's approach is based on a principle that sounds as simple as it is plausible: The right food at the right time.

Mona Nehmer's Book: Eat Like the Champions: Achieve Peak Form with the Right Nutrition – The Success Recipe from Liverpool FC's Nutrition Expert | With a Foreword by Jürgen Klopp

Not every player in a football team needs the same thing.

This requires a lot of knowledge and a lot of work if, like Mona Nemmer, you take it seriously and precisely and go into detail in daily practice. Because not every player in a football team needs the same thing. How many carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, how many minerals and fibers one needs depends on age, size, and weight, metabolism, body fat percentage, allergies and intolerances, but also on the kick-off time, the weather at the venue, the duration of the deployment and the position on the field.

A player who runs up and down the sideline for ninety minutes and covers up to 13 kilometers has a higher energy requirement than the goalkeeper. A player recovering from an injury in build-up training needs more protein than one who is in the starting lineup three times a week.

Ethnic background also plays a role: The current squad of Liverpool FC includes players from 18 nations, with cultural eating traditions as diverse as Japan, Brazil, Egypt, and, of course, Great Britain. To devise a nutrition plan precisely tailored to individual needs, Nemmer first creates a nutritional biography for each player.

A player who runs up and down the sideline for ninety minutes and covers up to 13 kilometers has a higher energy requirement than the goalkeeper.

What eating habits he grew up with and what he associates with his parents' cuisine, she finds out as well as preferences and aversions to smells and tastes and what questions and problems this can be associated with.

In addition, samples of saliva, blood, urine, and stool are taken and subcutaneous fat is measured. This results in a complete "portfolio" of the player. In consultation with the coaching team, fitness coaches and doctors, an individual nutrition profile is created on this basis.

This results in Nemmer's most important task: convincing the players to understand the right nutrition as an element of their personal success strategy. For this purpose, Nemmer has developed a nutrition compass that provides an easily understandable orientation as to which substances the body needs, how they work, in which foods they can be found, and in what ratio they should ideally end up on the plate.

Nutrition as an element of their personal success strategy

In her book, she also clarifies the basics first. What do proteins , what do carbohydrates ? Und weshalb lohnt es, auch auf Vitamine , Mineralien und Ballaststoffe in der Nahrung zu achten. „Ich bin ein großer Fan davon,“ schreibt Nemmer, „Dinge auf eine ganz praktische, wirklichkeitsnahe Weise zu erklären, damit die Menschen sofort verstehen, wie sie sich im Alltag ernähren sollen“.

© FC Liverpool

Masters of coaching among themselves: Mona Nemmer with Jürgen Klopp

So arbeitet Mona Nemmer mit den Spielern

Man ahnt, sie besitzt viel Übung darin, Grundsatzgespräche zu führen, in Workshops Zusammenhänge zu erklären und Lust auf neue Rezepte zu machen. Mit ihrem Stil, geduldig und anschaulich zu erklären, liegt sie ganz auf der Linie von Jürgen Klopp. Im Vorwort schreibt er: „Was wirklich zählt, ist Wissen weiterzugeben. Darin ist Mona unübertroffen.“ Ihre Fähigkeit, positiv auf Spieler und Mitarbeiter einzuwirken, macht sie so wertvoll für den Verein.

Um die Spieler zu erreichen und ihren Erkenntnissen größtmögliche Wirkung zu verleihen, legt Nemmer großen Wert auf die Präsentation der täglichen Mahlzeiten und formuliert Regeln, die anschaulich und leicht zu merken sind. Damit den Kickern die benötigte Energie zum richtigen Zeitpunkt zur Verfügung steht, entwickelte sie ein System, das sie „Mealwatch“ nennt.

Bei den Profis, deren Tagesablauf komplett durchgetaktet ist, spielt das eine geringere Rolle als bei jungen Spielern, um die sich noch nicht von früh bis spät ein Team aus Spezialisten kümmert. Mealwatch hilft ihnen, den idealen Moment der Energiezufuhr nicht zu verpassen. „Wer um vier Uhr trainieren will, dem sagt die Mealwatch, dass mindestens 90 Minuten vorher ein Snack fällig ist“, so Nemmer.

Auch die Portionsgrößen werden systematisch dem Energiebedarf des Spielers angepasst

In what proportion carbohydrates, proteins, fats, fibers, and minerals ideally land on the plate depends on the intensity of training and the stress from games. The portion sizes are also systematically adjusted to the player's energy needs: the more physical activity, the greater the need for carbohydrates.

"A moderate amount of physical activity," it says in "Eat like the champions", "for example with players who are substituted late, means on the plate a more even division into portions of rice, chicken, and vegetables. With very low activity, for example, injured players, the plate can be half filled with chicken and vegetables, since less rice, thus less carbohydrates as fuel, is needed." Players who eat vegetarian or vegan must take the correspondingly higher proportion of plant-based proteins.

Nemmer advises stars like Mo Salah, Virgil van Dijk, and Luis Díaz to also pay attention to the colorfulness of a meal. Meaning: "The more natural colors on the plate, the better for the body." This ensures that the body also receives important micronutrients.

The more natural colors on the plate, the better for the body

Green vegetables, for example, contain a lot of lutein and vitamin K, which strengthens the bones, the carotenoids in carrots or yellow peppers are rich in vitamin C and prevent muscle soreness, light vegetables like onions, garlic, or cauliflower contain allicin, a plant compound that acts anti-inflammatory and antibacterial, red grapes and red peppers are rich in antioxidants.

If you already have a pink salmon next to light yellow potatoes on your plate, Nemmer advises having a few forks of colorful vegetables to enrich the meal with micronutrients.

© FC Liverpool

Cooking School with Champions: Mona Nemmer with Sepp van den Berg, Naby Keita, Trent Alexander-Arnold, and Virgil van Dijk in the kitchen of FC Liverpool

Mona Nemmer doesn't work with prohibitions

It's also important to Nemmer not to issue bans. Neither pizza nor chocolate or chips are taboo. "I don't want to fundamentally forbid anyone from having a delivery pizza. It depends on how often you treat yourself to something like that. And if you do, you shouldn't feel guilty, but enjoy it and see it as something you've worked hard for. The main thing is not to forget that it is a special occasion and not part of the normal nutrition routine."

And: The more often you eat well and properly, the more you can occasionally treat yourself to something sweet, because: "The many nutrients help the gut microbes to deal with it."

Contrary to the advice of many nutrition experts, Nemmer also values bread – as long as it is baked with sourdough. Thanks to the natural bacteria from the fermentation process, it is easier to digest, and the energy provided by the carbohydrates is released slowly – unlike conventionally baked bread. "You can also enjoy eating such bread in the morning before a game."

Nemmer values bread – as long as it is baked with sourdough

Over the years, some recipes from the Nemmer kitchen have become favorites. The buttermilk chicken, for example, is highly valued, and the number one among the food favorites of the Liverpool players is called 9.30: a snack the players receive at half-past nine in the evening to recharge their energy reserves.

It consists of soy yogurt, oats, almonds, granola, cashew nuts, and a handful of berries. In the afternoon, it is also said to taste very good.Naturally, how many extra points Nemmer's expertise and persuasive power have provided over the years cannot be measured.

But, she said recently in an interview: The players "know, if we eat well, we feel better. And when we feel good, we usually play well. And if we play well, the chance of winning is very high. So one thing leads to another." Her message, as it can hardly be interpreted otherwise, has been received.