Gymnastics WA: Nutrition Workshop

At the end of a long, hard training week, athletes aged between 14-17 years old from gymnastics Western Australia congregated to complete their developing champion’s nutrition workshop.

Young gymnasts embraced the thought of enhancing and expanding their eating knowledge, initially learning about the key benefits nutrition and performance play in helping to prevent loading injuries and maintaining body composition. The workshop centered around the building blocks of macro and micronutrients and how competition and training dictates the intake of each.

A quiz tested athletes expertise around everyday common foods with many of the gymnasts now being able to identify specific foods they should be consuming before and after training to ensure optimal performance and recovery.

We delved into the mathematical side of eating, with several athletes learning to distinguish the kilojoule difference between the three macronutrients. Several were astounded to discover that fat is in fact the highest energy dense macronutrient.

As the workshop progressed,I provided input as an experienced athlete and gave advice in relation to ensuring food is prepared in advance when trying to balance the demands of sport and other areas of life along with sharing some of my favourite recipes. I enjoy cooking with natural, raw foods and addressed the issue of not restricting foods deemed as‘bad’ by the media and peers.

We concluded the workshop by brainstorming what our ideal weekly meal plan would look like, taking inspiration from the AIS recipe books created by renowned and respected dieticians. Overall, the afternoon was filled with learning and involved deconstructing several myths surrounding the ideas of eating for top performance as an athlete.