Original scientific paper
SPORT NUTRITION KNOWLEDGE OF COACHES
Bojan Matković
Damir Knjaz
Vjekoslav Cigrovski
Abstract
The nutrition of athletes has been of interest to scientists for decades and since the origins of sports competitions the questions about what to eat and what to drink in order to improve performance have been raised. Today there are scientific proofs that an adequate dietary habits influences in a large extent to an athlete's health, body composition, and energetic pathways during the activity as well as during the competition or recovery. Athletes should be well informed about the food groups, caloric intake, and daily meal schedule. As the previous investigations showed, the athletes obtain most of their knowledge about nutrition from their coaches, especially physical conditioning coaches. The major aim of this study would be determination of the level of knowledge about nutrition. The sample consisted of 32 basketball and 24 skiing coaches from Croatia. The knowledge about the sports nutrition was tested by means of questionnaire. The questionnaire was constructed based on the results of previous studies conducted at the Faculty of Kinesiology and the results from international studies. It consisted of items determining the general knowledge about nutrition, nutritional ingredients needed for providing adequate energy level in sports, items about supplements, meal schedule before training and competition and recovery, and of items testing the knowledge about importance of liquids, dehydration and rehydration during and after training and competition.
Surveys were anonymous and the data obtained were analysed by statistical software STATISTICA for WINDOWS.
According to the results obtained we concluded that the level of knowledge about nutrition basketball and skiing coaches globally is satisfactory but inadequate in some segments, especially in the part of nutritional supplements and energy sources. It also can be concluded that the sources of information for nutritional facts that coaches use are not always scientifically justified.
Keywords
nutrition; nutrition knowledge; basketball; skiing; coaches
Hrčak ID:
4415
URI
Publication date:
4.7.2006.
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