Do you want to work in a multidisciplinary way to give (recreational) athletes good nutrition and exercise advice? Have you ever thought: “I would like to advise athletes about nutrition or exercise, but I don’t know what the steps are to draw up substantiated advice and offer well-founded customized coaching?”. Then this minor is tailor-made for you! In this minor you learn to respond to questions about sports nutrition and exercise for your own target group in collaboration with other professionals from different disciplines. You learn about nutrition for energy balance, sport and performance and training adaptation. Your assignment is to improve the sports performance of a sports team and its individual athletes. To this end, you will conduct research into lifestyle factors that influence diet and exercise behaviour. You also study the current nutritional behaviour and the factors that positively and negatively influence the nutritional behaviour of the athlete, sports team or organisation. Subsequently, you will learn to make an appropriate design for an intervention to actually change behaviour. After implementation, testing and evaluation of the intervention, you can achieve a sustainable change in your target group that improves sports performance.

Objective:
To clarify the scientific state of the art in the field of nutrition, sport & exercise. Students acquire sufficient knowledge and skills to provide sound advice to athletes. The strength of this minor lies in the integral cooperation between and with professionals from different disciplines and professions, with (the own direction of) the athlete as the focal point.

Competences:

Determine nutritional needs of athletes and how these differ per sport and per individual.
Determine nutritional intake of athletes.
Creating a nutrition plan for athletes for both the short and long term.
Designing, implementing and evaluating nutrition plans for athletes from different sports.
Research how to entice people who are currently inactive and have unhealthy lifestyles to participate in sports.
Apply scientific knowledge in a sports setting.
Be able to synthesise and critically evaluate literature and translate it into practical recommendations.
Design, implement and evaluate nutrition education for athletes, coaches and teams.
Be able to independently review international literature related to human exercise performance and (sports) nutrition and translate scientific findings into practical recommendations.

Students of Nutrition and Dietetics, Sports Science, Movement Science, The Hague Academy of Physical Education, Skin Therapy and Nursing, Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy.

This minor is also of interest to students from the Psychomotor Therapy, Social Pedagogical Assistance, Social Work & Services, Pedagogical Academy for Primary Education programmes. All students who are interested, irrespective of their programme of study, are welcome to apply for this minor.

Students must have completed the Propedeuse at at least college level before participation.

Aspiring students must present their propaedeutic certificate at the start of the minor.

We also intend to offer this minor in the context of lifelong development.

Working methods:

• Working groups
• Working lectures
• E-learning
• Lectures
• Guest lecture
  Practicals
• Intervision meetings
• Work in practice
• Work visits in the world of sport and industry (national or international)
• Alternating activities such as workshops on specific topics 

Study load:
In total, you will engage in this minor for 840 hours. You will have 216 contact hours and 624 self-study hours.

Contact hours per week 
You will have an average of 10 - 15 contact hours per week, spread over three to four half-days (mornings and/or afternoons).
You will have an average of 27 - 32 hours of self-study per week. 

Final grade minor (100%), minimum requirement: 5,5.

• Group assignment 1: Presentation of a Persona (30%) – 2.7
• Group assignment 2: Presentation of the choices made in the define and ideate phase towards an intervention for a sports team (30%) – 2.12
• Group assignment 3: Mini documentary of the Designed prototype group intervention, testing and evaluation, implement intervention for a sports team and a factsheet for the sports team (40%) – 2.18

Retest: 

• Group assignment 1 - 2.10
  Group assignment 2 - 2.15
  Group assignment 3 - 2.20

Conditional criteria:

Demonstrable and sufficiently active participation (80%) in lessons and in all (intermediate) sprints and completion of the e-learning module is conditional to award a grade.

Do you have any questions about this minor? Do not hesitate to contact the teacher(s).

Are you a student at The Hague University of Applied Sciences? Then you can register through Osiris.

Curious about all the KOM minors of The Hague University of Applied Sciences? You will find an overview in the KOM Minorkrant (brochure) of THUAS.