Hello all
I was just wondering if many teams restrict their driver and coaches diet leading up to a major competition like you would an athlete, to ensure that they are concentrating properly and perform to the maximum of their abilities on competition day?
Also, do teams restrict what they can eat or drink on competition day? i.e do you make sure they eat healthy and drink water ect?
Thanks
Honestly that’s kind of crazy. Your diet largely does not affect your ability to concentrate. Sleep is far more important.
Ok, i just thought i would ask because i find when i do not eat properly i get more nervous and do not perform properly - or when i drink coke i become shaky and find small adjustments with the controls hard…
Part of this is superstitious, part of this is subconscious, and all of this is different from person to person.
I don’t follow any major regiment, but I do whatever I can to stay calm before and during competition.
If eating right and stuff works for you, then that’s excellent, but super imposing that rule onto an entire team is slightly absurd.
My team doesn’t exactly restrict diet… but we do make our driver get a good amount of sleep.
I made it through the worlds with less than 6 hours sleep while having massive meals most nights and I think I did quite well, we were 4-0 at the start of the second day.
But it’s really up to the driver, if he doesn’t get enough sleep or succumbs easily to sugar highs it’s his responsibility to drive the best he can which might mean no coke for a week.
Tl:dr IMO a driver shouldn’t have to actualy go on a diet. Just do
whatever feels right.
Lolololol.
In previous years, our team tried a 100% Skittles diet. Believe it or not we found it to be a bad idea. However we did find it a good idea to give your opponents mega doses of Skittles. The sugar and the dyes are wonderful.
Seriously we do try to provide lots of water for the team.
Rofl, the only rule my coach enforces is the no violence rule during the competition. Our team gets very stressed and violent so he gives us time outs and lets us do what we wont so we can cool off. My personal favourite: peeving at the chicks. Sadly, in New zealand, not many teams have chicks, in the entire lower north island teams, there is about 5 chicks in total, and they are underage so im not even going to go there. So my backup plan is eating!
In all seriousness, you need sleep, thats why one of our teams does crap, coz their team members stay up till 2am building their robot at the last minute coz they have been pissing around the entire year! I dislike them but eh! Thats life! So make sure your team gets sleep, and make sure they eat, doesn’t matter what they eat just as long as they eat and stay hydrated.
Haha! If I told Logan about that idea he’d really want to try it… XD
~Jordan
Last year durring the MVAC competition my team worked the entire night before day 2 of matches we had to do a total overhaul of our wall robot for Clean Sweep. We had probably 20 minutes of sleep from those who needed a time out and were stressing out. We performed well both driver and coach of the 3 man team (I was the driver and the other person who stayed up with no sleep was the coach) we managed to go 4-6 in the competition. We got through the first match of the day on 2 cups of coffee and the rest of the day we were on our own and did very well. So a strict diet is unnecessary but should be healthy any way and sleep is for the weak you are in a robotics competition if your robot needs tweaking you tweak it until its done no matter the time of the day or night 
haha, i see alot of people are laughing at me 
i was just posting to see what people do to to ensure better results from their drivers and coaches apart from the obvious (sleep)
If they drive well, treats.
If they drive poorly, they are forced to watch Pauly Shore’s “Biodome.”
Keep in mind I haven’t won any trophies in quite awhile. 
If it works, it works. Even if it is or isn’t superstitious! What are your theories behind dieting versus competition?
Well your team must not win much scrimmages if you have to be “tweaking” your robot all night at the last minute! We tweak our robot when its needed DURING THE TEST PHASE! You shouldnt be doing any changes during the competition apart from replacing faulty parts. My team had to drag our other teams sorry *** to worlds. We didn’t win the regional last year but my team won the excellence award. The bull**** thing was that they got the team number wrong so they awarded the disorganized other team the excellence award and got to take their robot to worlds. So sleep and organization is important and anyone who thinks otherwise must be pretty stupid. During the competition I make sure I get at least 6 hours of sleep and eat a good breakfast that will help me start my day.
Charsleysa, that is absolutely uncalled for. This forum is not to criticize others, it is so that we can help each other. I would give you the same advice that Xander gave you on the RobotC forums.
I can’t wait to see you guy’s at nationals. See how you compare to everyone else.
As the instigator of this diet, and the team member that would show up with a literal five pounds of skittles, I would like to put the disclaimer that we only gave our opponents loads of sugar after we, the poor drivers and team members, could no longer hold any more skittles…
And yeah… I think it should be left up to the teams… It would be nice to have more water available though…
And just a sidenote: skittles are amazing, and make a really good diet…
Hey! Why wait for nationals? You should come down to the Lower North Island regionals! It will be fun!
Engineering is never done no matter at what point in the season you are in. A robotics competition is more than just that its learning and developing your abilities as an engineer so your design is never done and can always been “tweaked” to make it better and perform better than it could ever before. A robots performance is critical I will agree with you but if you cannot make it any better then you are not engineering at all.