RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Determinants of coaches’ intentions to provide different recommendations on sports nutrition to their athletes Raphaëlle Jacob 1,2,3,4 , Steven Couture 1,2 , Benoît Lamarche 1,2 , Véronique Provencher 1,2 , Éliane Morissette 1,2 , Pierre Valois 5 , Claude Goulet 4,6 and Vicky Drapeau 1,3,4,6* Abstract Background: Coaches are considered as an important source of nutrition information by their athletes. However, their knowledge in this area is often insufficient for proper guidance and may lead to the dissemination of misinformation regarding sports nutrition. The aim of this study was to assess coaches’ intentions as well as psychosocial determinants underlying their intentions to provide sports nutrition recommendations to their high school athletes. Methods: Coaches (n = 47) completed a Web-based questionnaire based on the theory of planned behaviour, to assess their intentions to provide three different sports nutrition recommendations and their determinants. Multiple regression analyses were used to identify the variables that were most strongly related to the intentions. Results: Forty-six, 44.7 and 91.9% of coaches had the intention to recommend a higher consumption of foods rich in carbohydrates, foods rich in proteins and an increase in hydration to their athletes, respectively. Subjective norm was the only significant determinant of coaches’ intention to recommend a higher consumption of foods rich in carbohydrates (R 2 = 53.7%, β = 0.73 ± 0.12, P< 0.0001). Subjective norm and perceived behavioural control were significantly associated with coaches’ intentions to recommend a higher consumption of foods rich in proteins (R 2 = 25.9%, β = 0.50 ± 0.16, P = 0.002 and R 2 = 17.2%, β = 0.39 ± 0.17, P = 0.01, respectively) and an increase in hydration (R 2 = 26.8%, β = 0.38 ± 0.13, P = 0.001 and R 2 = 46.3%, β = 0.58 ± 0.11, P < 0.0001, respectively). Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that subjective norm and perceived behavioural control represent important determinants of coaches’ intentions to provide recommendations on sports nutrition. These findings should be considered in future interventions aimed at facilitating proper general sports nutrition recommendations provided by coaches to their athletes. Keywords: Coaches, Adolescent athletes, Theory of planned behaviour, Sports nutrition Background Coaches have many responsibilities to promote the optimal development of their athletes and providing recommenda- tions on sports nutrition certainly represent one important issue. Although family, friends, physicians, dietitians, the Internet, magazines and media represent important sources of information for high school athletes [1–7], most of them obtain their information regarding sports nutrition and dietary supplements mainly from their coaches [1–4, 6, 7]. Therefore, it is not surprising to see that many coaches pro- vide general recommendations on sports nutrition to their athletes [8–10]. One important related issue is that most coaches do not have specific or formal training in sports nutrition, and their knowledge is often inadequate to appropriately guide their athletes on nutrition topics [ 8–12]. For instance, a study among French Canadian high school coaches showed that their nutrition knowledge is not optimal, yet, they reported providing advice on carbohydrates, proteins and hydration to their athletes [10]. Although a coach’ s role is not to be an expert in sports nutrition, their close and daily © The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. * Correspondence: vicky.drapeau@fse.ulaval.ca 1 Institute of Nutrition and Functional Foods, Laval University, Quebec G1V 0A6, Canada 3 Quebec Heart and Lung Institute Research Center, Quebec G1V 4G5, Canada Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Jacob et al. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (2019) 16:57 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12970-019-0311-x