I've heard alot of confusing talk from doctors and others regarding how much time there should be between a meal and the practice that comes after the meal, or between a practice and the meal that comes after the practice; or between the last practice and bed-time. This table shows several meals/practices taken from the internet. The bottom row gives an average of all the routines.

 

The various routines vary wildly despite all the prognosticating and research that has been done re such subjects. The time between the end of breakfast and the beginning of the morning practice varied from 15 minutes to 120 minutes. The time between the end of the morning practice and lunch varied from 30-75 minutes. The time between the end of lunch and the beginning of the afternoon practice varied from 60-180 minutes. The time between the end of afternoon practice and the beginning of dinner varied from 15 to 210 minutes. The time between end of dinner and evening practice varied from 45 to 135 minutes. The only thing there was a general consensus on was the time between the end of the evening practice and lights-out/bed-time, which varied from 120-150 minutes. Notably at last count 53 percent of the practice routines did not feature any evening practice. Most of the routines featured a morning practice and an afternoon practice.

 

The rule of thumb seems to be that there should be a 60 minute interval separating the first practice from the meal (breakfast) that comes before it and the meal that comes after it; a 105 minute interval between the second meal and the beginning of the second practice; a 60 minute interval between the end of the second practice and the beginning of the third meal (dinner); a 90 minute interval between the end of dinner and the beginning of the third, evening, practice; and a 150 minute interval between the end of the evening practice and bed-time. That would be: breakfast-60-practice-60-lunch-105-practice-60-dinner-90-practice-150-sleep. Mnemonically this would be , 1 hour should separate a practice from meals except for 0.75 hours before lunch, 1.75 hours after lunch and 1.5 hours after dinner; and evening practice should end 2.5 hours before bed-time.

 

It is interesting that the American Pro tackle Football team the Green Bay Packers now alternates between one practice at 2 PM in a day, and 2 practices one at 845 AM and one at 630 PM in a day, with no practice Wednesday and Sunday (http://www.packerstrainingcamp.com/practice_schedule/). This makes sense given the fact that a practice can be similar to light weightlifting and weightlifters are inclined to avoid exercising a muscle everyday so as to give the given muscle time to recuperate. By the way another article at http://www.stlouisrams.com/article/62872/ has info on what the Packers eat at their training camp.