Wide receiver Gehrig Dieter wears a black Fitbit on his left wrist, the type that’s able to track his heartbeat.
The Bowling Green senior transfer doesn’t care so much about the number of steps he accumulates each day — football practice alone handles that — but more so about his sleep patterns.
“Yeah, you see it give you [a] pretty detailed number on how you sleep,” Dieter said. “So seeing that and seeing how it tracks is kind of cool to see.”
He thinks it’s a nice, little watch, too.
More important, however, the Fitbit is a simple representative of the many resources Dieter now has to help him stay on top of his health while at Alabama.
“At BG, we kind of didn’t really have a nutrition program,” he said. “So coming here, it’s really been a lot of fun getting all those type of thins that we didn’t have there. It’s been great.”
A lot of the credit goes out to director of performance nutrition Amy Bragg.
Linebacker Ryan Anderson leans on Bragg for his health. She has been here for his entire Alabama career, dating back to 2012, two years after Bragg joined the Alabama staff.
“She has it down to even the fat burner I drink in the morning after workout,” Anderson said. “It’s done exactly how I’ve always done it since I’ve been here.”
Just over four years later, Bragg still advises Anderson on exactly what to drink and what to eat — he loves pasta day. It’s important for him to maintain his weight, which is a feat in and of itself.
On Alabama’s roster, the six-foot-two redshirt senior weighs in at 252 pounds, but that’s not a constant.
“My body is just weird,” Anderson said. “I could be 250 one day, then come in the next day and I’ll be 260. She always just helps me.”
But Anderson is just one many Bragg can’t forget about the rest of the team.
Anderson said Bragg knows exactly what vitamins certain players need. She knows their favorite shakes. She knows who takes Juven shots- a liquid protein that is designed to aid tissue growth- and she knows how each player likes to recover after a workout.
Simply put: Bragg knows her players. She keeps them conscious of their health, which is something that can make or break an athlete.
“We’re out there competing every, single day, giving it our all,” Dieter said. “The biggest thing is just taking care of our bodies.”
