Nutrition for tennis coaches
A tennis coach gets asked about food constantly and is trained for none of it. Worse, you answer whether you mean to or not: a raised eyebrow at what comes out of the bag is an answer, and it carries more weight than anything a nutritionist says at a consultation the player attends once.
This is written for the person in that position, to mark out three things: what actually falls to you, what does not, and where the exposure is yours rather than the player's. Turning you into a dietitian would be a bad outcome for everybody.
The exposure nobody mentions
Start here, because it is the part coaches are most often unaware of.
Under the Tennis Anti-Doping Programme you are not a bystander. The rules define a Player Support Person, and several anti-doping rule violations are committed by "a Player or other Person": complicity or attempted complicity, and prohibited association among them. A coach can be charged in their own right, independently of whether the player is charged.
Complicity covers assisting, encouraging, aiding, abetting, conspiring, covering up. Handing a player a product you have not checked is not complicity in itself, but the distance between the two is smaller than most coaches assume, and it shrinks the more you knew.
Do not put anything in a player's hand that you cannot name, source and certify. Not a tablet from your own bag, not something a physio handed you, not a drink somebody mixed. If you would not sign a statement about what is in it, do not pass it across.
The ITIA's integrity e-learning, TIPP, is mandatory for players and officials every 2 years and recommended for coaches. Do it. It takes an hour and it is the only place the sport explains your own position to you.
What is in your remit
More than you think, and none of it requires nutrition knowledge.
The schedule. You decide when the session is. A player training at 7 am who eats at 11 has a problem you created and can uncreate. If a session sits across a meal, the meal moves or the session does.
The bag. You see it every day. Nobody else does. A player leaving for a tournament with 2 bananas and a bottle of water is visible from across the court, and that is a logistics failure rather than a dietary one.
The rule that food comes to practice. Not a plan, a rule. It costs nothing to enforce and it removes the most common cause of the under-fuelled week: the gap between lunch and dinner filled by a 2-hour session.
The dinner after a tournament day. The one line from the research on youth tennis players that I would put on a wall: they do not raise carbohydrate at dinner as a recovery strategy after competition. If you say one thing about food all season, say that tomorrow's match is fuelled tonight.
Water on the schedule at a tournament. Especially with juniors, whose thirst response is a less reliable guide than an adult's. Prompting is coaching, not fussing.
What is not in your remit
One thing, and it is absolute.
Body composition in a growing player is not a coaching conversation. Between roughly 12 and 16 most players get heavier and some get slower, coordination usually catches up within months, and the sentence that arrives at that moment from a trusted coach can outlast the career.
If it genuinely needs addressing, it goes to a doctor and a dietitian who work with adolescents, privately, without a number said out loud in front of the player. I plan weight reduction for a living and I do not do it for people who are still growing. Neither should you. The full version of that argument is here.
The same principle applies more quietly to adults. You can say a player looks flat, or slow, or tired. Those are observations about tennis. Comments about a body are a different category, they land differently coming from you than from anyone else in the building, and there is nothing in your job description that requires you to make them.
What to notice
You see the player every day. That is a diagnostic advantage no visiting professional has. Use it.
The player who trains normally and gets slower over weeks. Frequent minor illness. Injuries with no incident behind them. Someone who cramps in most hot matches rather than once in the longest match of the season, which is a different problem and worth investigating rather than treating with a sachet.
The player who eats nothing at a tournament and everything at home is paying off a debt, whatever it looks like from outside.
And in female players, a change in menstrual pattern is a signal, not a private matter to be avoided. You do not have to be the one who discusses it. You do have to be the one who makes sure somebody qualified does.
How to say it
Coaches often ask me for the words. Here is what works, in my experience, and the pattern is the same each time.
Talk about the job rather than the person. "You dropped off in the third set and you had not eaten since 11" is a coaching observation with a fix attached. "You need to eat better" is a judgement with nothing attached.
Give one instruction at a time. A player who is told to change 6 things changes none.
Make it a rule of the group rather than a correction of an individual, especially with juniors. Food comes to practice, everybody, every day. Nobody is singled out and the shy one gets fed.
And when you do not know, say so and find someone. "I do not know, let us ask" costs a coach nothing and is the answer players remember as competent.
The week away
Tournament weeks are where every plan fails, and they fail for logistical reasons rather than nutritional ones.
Know where food will come from before you travel, because a venue with a vending machine and a burger stand is the default rather than the exception. Assume the schedule will slip and plan the eating around the earliest possible start rather than the scheduled one, which is its own subject. Carry more than seems reasonable.
And in a country where contamination risk is higher, be deliberate about where meat comes from. Athletes have returned from certain destinations with prohibited substances in their samples from food alone. That is a coaching decision as much as a player one, because you are usually the person choosing the restaurant.
What this adds up to
What you need is to run a schedule that lets a player eat, notice the things only a daily observer can notice, refuse the one conversation that is not yours, and never hand across anything you cannot name. Learning nutrition is not required.
That is four things. None of them require a qualification and all of them are worth more to the player than anything they will read.
Common questions
Yes. The Tennis Anti-Doping Programme defines a Player Support Person, and several anti-doping rule violations are committed by a player or other person, including complicity or attempted complicity and prohibited association. A coach can face a charge in their own right rather than only as a consequence of a player's case.
In a growing player, nothing. Body composition in an adolescent is a matter for a doctor and a dietitian experienced with young athletes, handled privately and without numbers said in front of the player. With adults, observations about tennis, such as looking flat or slow in a third set, are within a coach's remit, while comments about a body are a different category and carry disproportionate weight coming from a coach.
Four things. Run a schedule that does not place sessions across meals. Look at the bag before a tournament trip. Make food at practice a rule for the whole group rather than a correction of an individual. And insist that dinner after a tournament day is the biggest meal rather than the smallest, because research on youth tennis players finds they do not raise carbohydrate at dinner as a recovery strategy.
A player training normally but getting slower over weeks, frequent minor illness, injuries with no incident behind them, eating nothing at tournaments and everything at home, and cramping in most hot matches rather than once in the longest match of a season. In female players a change in menstrual pattern is a signal that needs a qualified professional, whether or not the coach is the one to raise it.
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Educational material, not legal or medical advice. Anti-doping obligations are set by the rules of your own federation and anti-doping organisation, which prevail in all cases.