Nutrition, Exercise and Sports
Learn about Nutrition, Exercise and Sports and understand how nutrition can support exercise and sports performance.
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Are you involved in sports and do you want to have a better understanding of the role of nutrition on performance and health? Do you want to learn whether certain nutritional strategies could be relevant for your own athletic performance and/or muscle growth? Are you a dietitian, physiotherapist or a health/sport coach and do you want to be able to provide proper nutritional advice for your clients? Or, are you none of the above but interested in nutrition and sports and want to make your own informed decisions about your daily food intake?
Then this online course is for you!
Nutrition is crucial to live an active and healthy life, to support training, and to optimize performance. In this course, researchers and teachers from Wageningen University & Research will familiarize you with the nutritional aspects of exercise and sports. What are the basic concepts in exercise physiology and sport nutrition science? How is exercise being fueled for the different types of sports like; power sports, sprinting and endurance exercise? And how does protein support skeletal muscle mass and performance? In this course you will learn to estimate energy needs and understand thermoregulation and fluid balance. You will learn about the role of micronutrients and supplements in exercise performance. Moreover, you will be introduced to some health issues related to doing exercise.
This course also touches upon how the lessons learned from nutrition and sports research can be applied during ageing. For example, what are the benefits of extra protein in vulnerable age groups?
Be aware that this course will not tell you exactly what to eat. Instead, you will learn and understand the nutritional aspects of exercise and sport, so you can make your own informed decisions and critically evaluate nutritional advices and claims.
For whom?
This course is especially useful for:
- Sport- and health coaches, Physiotherapists and Dietitians
- People working in the (sport) food industry
- Athletes and professional sporters
- Everyone with a healthy appetite for knowledge about nutrition, exercise and sports
Ready to join the MOOC? This course contains several interesting and inspiring interviews with nutrition and sport professionals. It will provide basic understanding of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, and contains challenging assignments that will give you insight in nutritional needs and performance benefits for (your) athletes, your clients or yourself.
Meet your instructors
Dr. Marco Mensink
Assistant Professor Nutrition, Energy metabolism & Health
Wageningen University & Research
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Learner testimonials
"I found this course very informative. Just the right about of techincal/scientific information without being too confusing. I am able to use the information (formulas and tables) for personal use in my chosen sport to optimise my own nutrition and recovery strategies. I do not work in this field but it has prompted me to considering doing more study in this area and possibly look for a career related to this field. The quests were interesting and fun to do. Enjoyed the interaction and communication with other students via the discussion forum. The forum prompted more questions and further research into areas I had not previously investigate."
"This course was very informative. A lot more imformative than I expected. I am a personal trainer who has completed many courses before (many of which were expensive, €1000 and up) and I honestly think this is one of the best "basic" courses I've done. I say basic, but there was definitely a lot of stuff in here that I didn't know yet, because it was very in-depth. It did not cover anatomy or movement science (which also wasn't the point of this course I think) so on its own it's probably not enough to make a professional, but I would highly recommend it to anyone in the sports/exercise/nutrition branch."