Abstract
Nutritional knowledge is key for health and performance in athletes. Moreover, an athlete’s individual knowledge is crucial in specific athletic groups or sports, with a limited sport science support network. Female sports are unfortunately still underfunded compared to their male counterparts, and as a result, female teams often do not have the support of a dietician to help ensure optimal health and performance, instead placing this responsibility on the individual athlete. The lack of funding is also applicable to rugby union in the United Kingdom (UK), despite attracting greater funding, elite female rugby clubs have limited support staff with few having access to nutrition advice from registered experts. For this reason, it is therefore important that individual athletes have the tools to develop nutritional knowledge where a nutritionist or dietitian is not available. PURPOSE: Determine the level of nutritional knowledge in a group of elite female rugby union players; and to identify whether an online educational intervention can improve their nutritional knowledge. METHODS: Sixteen elite female athletes from a UK premiership rugby club participated in the intervention. An adapted 89-item Nutrition for Sport Knowledge Questionnaire (NSKQ) which was administered at baseline and repeated (R-NSKQ) after the educational intervention. Due to Covid-19, the intervention was run digitally with 5 weekly pre-recorded education sessions. RESULTS: Overall NSKQ scores were 49.9±16.7% at baseline and increased to 58.8±13.3% (P<0.01) post intervention. Knowledge regarding Body Composition 66.2±18.8 vs 78.6±3.6 (P=0.002), Macronutrients 52.4±24.4 vs 65.7±16.7 (P=0.016) and Sports Nutrition 45.3±18.8 vs 55.6±15.2 (P=0.015) all improved significantly as a result of the 5-week educational intervention. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that nutritional knowledge is lacking in elite female rugby players, but an educational programme can lead to a significant improvement in players’ knowledge.
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