Bri­an Lewis

In an ef­fort to en­cour­age young peo­ple with a keen in­ter­est in sport to get in­volved and make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence. I am com­mit­ted to giv­ing them a voice and space. This week's Things that Mat­ter col­umn places the fo­cus on sports nu­tri­tion and Tracey Pierre, a grad­u­ate of Leeds Met­ro­pol­i­tan Uni­ver­si­ty, who has agreed to put pen to pa­per and share her thoughts on sports nu­tri­tion.

The name "Sport Nu­tri­tion" is some­what of a mis­nomer, be­cause it im­plies a spe­cial kind of nu­tri­tion on­ly geared to­ward peo­ple who play sports. How­ev­er, in this con­text, 'sports' is gener­ic and much broad­er in its de­f­i­n­i­tion.

Sport Nu­tri­tion en­com­pass­es an ex­treme­ly wide range of po­ten­tial can­di­dates, in­clud­ing ath­letes, week­end war­riors, gym rats, fit­ness buffs, diehard aer­o­bic queens and sport fa­nat­ics. It in­cludes any­one en­gaged in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty. In fact, if you train and eat food, you're en­gaged in sports nu­tri­tion.

'Sport Nu­tri­tion' is an in­tri­cate fu­sion be­tween the sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly pre­cise and the so­cial­ly prac­ti­cal. There is an art to nour­ish­ing an ac­tive body with high qual­i­ty foods and nat­ur­al health prod­ucts in a skil­ful and safe man­ner. One must not on­ly be con­cerned with what we eat, but al­so the when, where and how. The sci­ence of this field helps us to un­der­stand the fun­da­men­tal the­o­ries of "why" cer­tain rec­om­men­da­tions and de­ci­sions are made re­gard­ing ath­lete nu­tri­tion. Through care­ful ob­ser­va­tion, re­search and re­peat­ed ex­per­i­ment, ex­perts in the field in­ves­ti­gate the ef­fect of con­trolled ex­er­cise, food and nat­ur­al prod­ucts on the health, re­cov­ery and per­for­mance of ath­letes. While op­ti­mum nu­tri­tion can fa­cil­i­tate sig­nif­i­cant gains in these ar­eas, poor nu­tri­tion­al choic­es can have equal­ly dis­as­trous re­sults. As a re­sult, changes to an ath­lete's di­et very clear­ly man­i­fest them­selves with­in any one of these three pa­ra­me­ters.

Nu­tri­tion­al needs of ath­letes can vary sig­nif­i­cant­ly from those of the av­er­age phys­i­cal­ly ac­tive in­di­vid­ual and as such, their eat­ing habits re­quire spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion. An ath­lete's di­etary needs can fluc­tu­ate through­out the cy­cle var­i­ous phas­es of an ath­let­ic year.

Macronu­tri­ent re­quire­ments of­ten need to be ma­nip­u­lat­ed so as to meet per­son­al goals and max­imise the ben­e­fits of train­ing, en­hance per­for­mance in com­pe­ti­tion, re­duce re­cov­ery time and min­imi­ae the risk of in­jury. Though many ath­letes are com­mit­ted to their sport and ac­knowl­edge the im­por­tance of nu­tri­tion in prepa­ra­tion, com­pe­ti­tion and re­cov­ery, they of­ten face many sit­u­a­tions that chal­lenge their re­solve, and make ad­her­ing to a pro­gramme dif­fi­cult.

Out­side the realm of mi­cro and macronu­tri­ents, in­di­vid­u­als in the field of sport nu­tri­tion need to have an un­der­stand­ing of the ef­fects of trav­el and trav­el re­lat­ed ill­ness on an ath­lete and the ways in which food and oth­er re­lat­ed in­ter­ven­tions are best used to both avoid and treat them.

Eval­u­a­tion of nu­tri­tion knowl­edge of ath­letes can lead to a clear­er un­der­stand­ing of ar­eas around which an ed­u­ca­tion or in­ter­ven­tion pro­gramme should fo­cus. It has been sug­gest­ed that a pos­i­tive at­ti­tude to­ward nu­tri­tion is an in­di­ca­tor of greater re­spon­sive­ness to ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes. The nu­tri­tion knowl­edge of Caribbean ath­letes and coach­es, more specif­i­cal­ly, those from Trinidad and To­ba­go, has nev­er been re­port­ed in an aca­d­e­m­ic are­na.

Suc­cess­ful in­te­gra­tion of a sport nu­tri­tion pro­gramme re­quires an un­der­stand­ing of the ath­let­ic cul­ture, phys­i­o­log­i­cal mile­stones, and life stres­sors faced by ath­letes. Ath­lete ed­u­ca­tion should there­fore be both prac­ti­cal and dy­nam­ic.

Pro­fes­sion­als in the field of sport nu­tri­tion should be com­pe­tent in:

En­sur­ing that nu­tri­tion plans are fo­cused pri­mar­i­ly on the health and well be­ing of the ath­lete

Ap­ply­ing sport nu­tri­tion sci­ence to fu­el fit­ness and per­for­mance

Con­duct­ing and analysing nu­tri­tion as­sess­ments.

Ed­u­cat­ing in­di­vid­u­als in food se­lec­tion, pur­chase and prepa­ra­tion

Ad­dress­ing en­er­gy bal­ance and weight man­age­ment is­sues

Ad­dress­ing nu­tri­tion­al chal­lenges to per­for­mance

De­vel­op­ing per­son­alised nu­tri­tion and hy­dra­tion strate­gies

Un­der­stand­ing the unique needs of veg­e­tar­i­an, ve­g­an oth­er ath­letes with spe­cial di­ets

Pro­vid­ing clear and con­cise in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the use of sup­ple­ments and oth­er er­gogenic aids

Pierre has a Mas­ters De­gree in Sports and Ex­er­cise Sci­ence with a fo­cus on Sport Nu­tri­tion from Leeds Met­ro­pol­i­tan Uni­ver­si­ty. She has a keen in­ter­est in shar­ing her knowl­edge and giv­ing back to sport in T&T. She was re­cent­ly named as the sport nu­tri­tion­ist for the T&T team for the up­com­ing sec­ond Sum­mer Youth Olympics in Nan­jing, Chi­na from Au­gust 16-28.

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