What is Sports Nutrition?

Sports nutrition is the use of evidence based dietary interventions to impact and improve athletic performance and training ability.

How is it Used?

Our Sport Nutritionists can work with individual athletes within sports on a one-to-one basis or with groups of athletes within wider sport teams to deliver targeted dietary advice in a workshop setting.

Overview of Discipline

Here at the Sport Northern Ireland Sports Institute, we promote a ‘food first’ approach to optimising performance; we work closely with our physiologists, strength and conditioning coaches, physiotherapists, Doctors and psychologists to ensure interventions have a multi-disciplinary and athlete-centred approach. The strategies used are different for each athlete and are developed using a detailed knowledge of:

  • The athlete, including their lifestyle, learning style and willingness to change
  • The athlete’s sport and event
  • The athlete’s current nutrition intake, nutrition awareness and practical skills (cooking, shopping, etc.)
  • Sport and exercise nutrition including biochemistry and physiology

Our sport nutritionists also work closely with the Sport NI Pure Winner Programme to support clean sport and assessing the need, assessing the risk and assessing the consequences when considering the use of supplements.

Areas of Work

  • Educating on the basics of fuelling, recovery and hydration to optimise health and performance
  • Supporting clean sport by providing information and guidance on safe supplement use
  • Travel and competition nutrition strategies
  • Assessment of blood biochemistry in collaboration with sports medicine to evaluate vitamin and mineral status and overall health
  • Practical skills workshops to improve cookery skills and food knowledge
  • Safe weight management education
  • Integration with sports nutrition networks across the UK and Ireland to collaborate on specific topics of interest e.g. the female athlete

Core Objectives of Discipline

The core objective of the Sports Nutrition service is to improve the athlete’s performance through optimising health, fuelling, hydration and supplementation practices during both training and competition phases.

Track Record

All members of the SNISI Sports Nutrition team are registered with SENr – the Sport and Exercise Nutrition Register. They are also UKAD Educators and hold their level 1 ISAK (The International Society for the Advancement of Kinanthropometry) qualification.

Resources:

SENr – SENR – Sport and Exercise Nutrition Register – British Dietetic Association (BDA)

AIS – Performance Support | Australian Institute of Sport (ais.gov.au)