As coaches, we can support our athletes through nutritional literacy; encouraging conversations around food; subtle nudges towards better choices, and through better planning and organisation.
For example, for athletes aiming to get the best out of their training, there are times when fuelling beforehand or eating a recovery snack can be useful.
The following infographics contain tips for your athletes relating to nutrition and coaching conversation starters to help you support them to make good food choices and plan effectively.
It’s important to remember that fuelling a good quality, longer training session, or to recover well to improve the ability to train again later is especially vital for younger athletes during:
- growth phases
- high training loads
- double training days.
Each sport and training session might be slightly different, and so your snack selection can be changed to match the session.
To fuel up, you need to focus on energy foods (grains, cereals, fruit, tubers) and to aid recovery, you need to refuel and repair with combinations of energy foods and protein rich foods. If you can add colour in fruit and veggies, even better.
Download both infographics as a PDF to refer to later and share with your athletes.