Kelsey HigginsonSports Nutrition Coach and Founder at Clutch Day Coaching

How coaches can help athletes with nutrition

7 Apr 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:03

In this instructional video, the speaker addresses coaches on how to secure athlete buy‑in for proper nutrition. The core advice is three‑fold: first, involve parents because they purchase and provide food, encouraging them to supply portable, healthy snacks like Cuties, applesauce, and granola bars for bus rides or halftime. Second, identify and persuade a team leader or influential athlete to adopt nutritious habits; their behavior will cascade to teammates. The speaker illustrates this with a case study of a top runner headed to UCLA who began bringing Greek yogurt and granola after practice, prompting other girls on the team to follow suit over successive weeks. The overall message is that coaches can create quick wins by targeting parents and a single influential athlete, using simple snack options to foster broader team adoption of healthy eating.

Chapters

Coaches, what can you be doing to get your athletes bought in on nutrition? There's a couple of thoughts that I have surrounding that topic. The first one would be you gotta get the parents somewhat bought in before you can get the athletes bought in. They're the ones buying the food for them. They're the ones that are probably providing food on the bus ride over there. So if you can get the parents bought in, if you can get them contributing to buy Cuties and applesauce and granola bars so that your athletes are, have something to eat on the bus ride over or during halftime, that could be a great first win that packs a punch. The second thing I would say is if you can get one athlete bought in, particularly probably the leader of the team, a lot of the other athletes are more likely to follow. So an example of this, I have a girl that I've been working with, she's committed to UCLA, she's one of the best runners on her team. She started after practice bringing Greek yogurt and granola to eat right after practice. Couple weeks later, couple more girls started bringing Greek yogurt and granola, and then a couple weeks later, a couple more girls started bringing Greek yogurt and granola. They're going to follow the leader if they're seeing that the leader is having success. Which they will if they're actually eating the right foods.