APPLIED SPORTS & EXERCISE NUTRITION LESSON PLAN

Topic: Nutrition for Team Sports

Lecturer name: Nóra Ní Fhlannagáin
Date: 26/03/2019
Duration of Learning unit: 1hrs (16:00-17:00)
Module: Applied Sports & Exercise Nutrition
Topic: Nutrition for Team Sports
Mark the type of session:

Lecture X Tutorial ☐ Lab ☐ Studio ☐ Workshop ☐

1. AIM

The main aim of this lesson is to:

• Identify and list the challenges and opportunities of providing sports nutrition services to a
team.
• Identify key nutrition messages that apply to most intermittent sprint team sports, list and
prioritise them.
o Sports nutrition – what’s on the menu.
o Needs assessment
o List what key messages you would provide to the following group – ladies football.
• Identify what makes sports nutrition for team sports different to individual sports.
o Discuss how to manage the nutrition of a full team of athletes.
o Galway hurlers vs rugby players vs basketball?

2. MAIN LEARNING OUTCOME & CORRESPONDING ASSESSMENT

Module Learning Outcomes (LOs) Assessment of LOs

At the end of this lesson the students will be (Note: each LO has an assessment. Include a variety
enabled to… of types.)
• List the challenges and opportunities of Pre-class work
providing sports nutrition services to a
team.
• Prioritise the most important nutritional Needs assessment
messages for a given team situation.
• List 5 clear messages that apply to most After-class work
intermittent sprint team sports.
• Identify what makes sports nutrition for Writing on the board
team sports different to individual sports.

3.
 4. THE LESSON

TIME LINE LECTURER ACTIVITIES LEARNER ACTIVITIES

SET INDUCTION (BEGINNING)

5 mins Introduction & learning outcomes

(5 mins)

LESSON SEQUENCE (MIDDLE)

10 mins Feedback from students to group on

pre-class activity. Students write one
(15 mins) thing each on the board.

If you were to provide nutrition

support to a team, what
opportunities would you have, and
what challenges do you think you
would have?

Create an Opportunities &

Challenges sheets for working with a
team – adult e.g. basketball, soccer,
gaa.

10 mins Discuss opportunities and challenges.

Read out best contributions from the
(20 mins) board, and add a few more from my
own list/slides.
10 mins List potential sports nutrition
services available to teams on the
(30 mins) board.

5 mins Discuss Mick McCarthy’s likely

experience of sports nutrition. Discuss
(35 mins) services and prioritise.

5 mins Students prioritise key messages for

workshop to footballers.
(40 mins)

5 mins Discuss innovation – give examples. Watch video – Manchester utd

Explain ways to get “buy-in” and nutritionist
(50 mins) compare how different nutritionists
innovate but continue to use the same
underlying scientific evidence.
CLOSURE (END)

5. LIST OF TEACHING RESOURCES

For class:

Slides, videos (within slides), marker, whiteboard.

 6. CRITICAL REFLECTION

What worked well?

I had asked the students to do some pre-class work and all of the students arrived at the class prepared. I made

every student write something on the board, and this added a competitive element as the fastest students could put

up the best ideas first, with the slowest students being left potentially struggling to come up with ideas that hadn’t

already been listed on the board. This worked very well because students had already done the work before

attending class. I repeated this activity and asked one student from each group to answer another pre-prepared

question on the board and while this worked well, it wasn’t as good as the first activity because there was less

accountability.

The students gave good examples of challenges and opportunities of working with sports teams that I hadn’t listed

on my own slides and I thanked them for their contributions.

I used post-it notes to assess what students had learnt, and if they had any questions at the end of class. I answered

the three most relevant questions in a group email to the class and this also gave me an opportunity to commend

the students and thank them for their participation.

Based on feedback, I think that the students enjoyed the real-life examples of how to be innovative in a sports

nutrition setting.

What did not work?

The lecture became more didactic as I progressed. Ideally I would ensure that there are regular activities throughout

the whole session to keep students engaged. Thankfully this class was with a relatively small group in a flat

classroom so they didn’t drift off too much.

The slide entitled “sports nutrition, what’s on the menu” was too small and students couldn’t see it, which meant

that it was difficult to discuss.

I ran out of time and didn’t have enough time to summarise the learnings from the class.
I think that this lecture could have been extended slightly, and then split into two lecture sessions. I didn’t have
enough time to fully discuss the differences and similarities between nutritionists and how they apply the same
guidelines with different teams.

To what extent did you address different domains of learning?

I feel that the pre-class work, and tasks within the session, addressed ‘understanding’, ‘applying’ and ‘analysing’. As

we used a lot of real-life examples, many of which the students came up with themselves I think that the students

will find it easy to ‘remember’ a lot of the information covered in the lecture. This will be tested in their final exam

which will also require them to display ‘understanding’, ‘application’, ‘analysis’ and ‘creation’ as they will receive a

case-study and will be required to create an appropriate performance nutrition strategy for the athlete in question.

What would I do differently next time?

I will embed my activities more evenly throughout the session.

I will consider splitting this lecture into two sessions, which will allow for summarizing and further
discussion on topics that were difficult to cover.

I will continue to use the post-it exit poll, however I will post the answer to questions on the moodle forum
rather than sending it by email to ensure that I can reuse the content next year.