WCC Nutrition Workshop for Student Athletes
3 July 2023
The Wellington City Council Athlete Development Programme is in full swing for 2023. This year, 22 athletes signed up from across several codes, including athletics, basketball, football, tennis, and karate.
Over the past three weeks, the athletes have been learning about sports nutrition from The Performance Pantry, including learning how to make nutritious smoothies and bliss balls. Key takeaways from the nutrition sessions included reinforcing the need for athletes to eat something before training to give them the best opportunity to train well along with a good tip to drink juice rather than water if you want to rehydrate quickly after exercise.
Athletes also had the opportunity to learn about developing confidence and coping with making mistakes with help from, the founder of Flow State and current mindset coach at the Hurricanes, Davie Gray. These workshops have been tailored to the needs of the individual athletes following the interviews they undertook with Suzie Muirhead and her team at Raise My Game. During these interviews, the athletes and their parents got the opportunity to discuss their goals and start planning for the future.
As we know, every athlete needs the support of their parents and family. The Nuku Ora Community Development Team held a parents workshop with Dr. Lara Andrews, who discussed her research on parental volunteering and its link to a child’s physical literacy along with a discussion on Balance is Better and what it means to parents.
Finally, the highlight of the evening was the opportunity for the parents to hear from Robyn and David Clareburt, the parents of Lewis Clareburt about the learnings they have taken from the journey of supporting an elite athlete. A couple of their stand-out learnings were:
- Creating a safe place at home where Lewis doesn’t have to talk about swimming
- Putting the needs of the athlete first rather than doing things to make it easier for themselves – They tried to move Lewis up to a swimming class with his sister to help with logistics but he missed his friends and didn’t enjoy it.
- Next term there will be further sessions with Davie Gray and the Performance Pantry along with other sessions tailored to the athlete's needs.
For further information on the programme feel free to contact the programme project manager, Graham Witts via grahamw@nukuora.org.nz.
