Meet SAB Sports Nutritionist Heidi Skolnik
At SAB, we’re committed to providing the best resources for our students to grow and achieve their goals beyond the studio. Our dedicated team of wellness professionals, including physical therapists, Pilates and conditioning instructors, nurses, nutritionists, and more, work collaboratively to support students on their journey to excellence.
Since 1997, Heidi Skolnik (MS, CDN, FACSM) has overseen the Performance Nutrition program at the School of American Ballet. Ms. Skolnik also manages the nutrition program at the Juilliard School (since 2008) and has worked with numerous Broadway shows, supporting the artist as athlete. Ms. Skolnik has been part of The Women’s Sports Medicine Center at Hospital for Special Surgery, the first of its kind in the United States, for over 25 years and has experience working with many professional sports organizations including the NY Knicks Basketball, NY Giants Football, NY Mets Baseball. Holding two Master’s degrees in Exercise Physiology and Human Nutrition, Ms. Skolnik is a Fellow with the American College of Sports Medicine and has sat on the board of The Bone Health and Osteoporosis Foundation. She has also authored five books including a New York Times best seller and has been featured on several TV media outlets including The Today Show, The View, Good Morning America, Live!, and others. Ms. Skolnik works with students to translate hard science into actionable steps to integrate into daily life. As a realist, Heidi believes M&M’s can fit into a healthy eating style along with red peppers, red meat, broccoli, and fresh fruit.
We interviewed Ms. Skolnik to gain insight into her work with SAB and her approach to wellness for dancers.
Why is understanding nutrition important for dancers?
Recognizing the dancer as an artistic athlete helps one realize all the reasons why nutrition- and really performance nutrition, is essential for the long-term health and physical resilience required to dance day in and day out for years. The ability to fuel long days of class and rehearsals, support strength, power, and stamina, the ability to recover between classes and days (nutrient timing), ensuring that the nutrients dancers are at highest risk of deficiency for are being met, keeping bones strong, managing hydration, mental health, concentration and focus in class- are all tied to nutrition. Injury prevention and healing are also tied to nutrition. For SAB students, they have the added demands of growth during adolescence.
What do you enjoy most about working with dancers?
I have always been privileged to work with excellence – from my days working with professional sports teams and high-level executives to now. These dancers are pursuing excellence and being part of their formative journey to create art, helping them develop eating competency and hopefully move forward with a positive relationship with food and body, is an extraordinary role to play and one that I am passionate about and appreciative of.
What are some of the most common misconceptions about dance nutrition?
That it is only about weight loss/weight maintenance.
What are some of your favorite memories in your time at SAB?
Oh- my- we have done so many things … When the Milk Mustache promotion was going strong, we did our own version – to promote bone health, and that was really fun with students getting their pictures taken with a milk mustache that we then put in frames as a keepsake.
We also do an ASK The Nutritionist Wheel of Fortune type game and nutrition trivia with give aways that really get students engaged. The scavenger hunt in the dining hall is a great part of new student orientation to familiarize students to Café offerings. We currently do monthly interactive tabling events and student participation is always enjoyable.
During the New York Junior Session, we rotate an annual program entitled Mission Nutrition with nutrition educational games that get the students involved. The alternate year is a Food Fair with different interactive stations including a snack bar where students build their own trail mix to take with them. The Summer Course includes a full hour (for each class level) of answering questions students have – watching the ah-ha moments happen is always wonderful to witness.
The one-to-one sessions are less ‘awesome’ and yet, obviously, so important as it allows all the group awareness efforts and education to be personalized and individualized.
How have you seen wellness programs change over the years at the School?
The support for nutrition has been there from day one when I was hired in 1996, 29 years ago. It was a very progressive vision to bring the sports nutrition model to dancers as prior, dancer nutrition was typically seen through a lens of diet culture and restriction.
Each member/leader that came into Student Life has a sincere and deep desire to help our students develop within the classroom and outsides the mirrored walls. The goal has been to help students navigate their well-being at this stage in life to be healthy through self-care and provide an environment that supports their emotional and physical developmental needs. That, in turn, would help each realize their dreams on the stage (while maintaining a stronger sense of identify). Each year, we evaluate and ask for a little more- to better the program and the offerings. We have a wellness committee that is comprised of a multidisciplinary group of practitioners (Nutrition, Counseling, PT, Pilates, Student Life, Strength and Conditioning, Nurse, Medical) who meet monthly to coordinate care. This is the best standard-of-care practice. For years, there was an artistic representative who came to the meetings but was not a part of the programming. Katy Vedder and Sion Harrington have continued to advocate tirelessly for the students and it is a celebration and success for Student Life to now have a partner in Aesha Ash as the Head of Artistic Health and Wellness to further advance wellness initiatives.
What’s your go-to snack?
This is a very mindful eating answer but it really depends on my day, my mood, my activity, my hunger and schedule….hummus, crackers and carrots; peanut butter on Triscuits and a hot coco (made with milk) or it could be just peanut butter and a banana if I want less; a yogurt and some nuts or I might add a fruit if I need more; dried fava beans (Bada Bean Bada Boom); cheese and an apple; a chocolate covered graham cracker or Yasso bar (as you can see, I have a long list of options and could keep going)
What does wellness mean to you?
Finding the things that keep me healthy and moving toward living a vibrant life-to be engaged and maintain a growth mindset. The specifics may change based on my stage of life but the tenet is the same: Wellness is an active pursuit. It is intentional and specific in actions, behaviors and mind set, even as it is imperfect in execution, which, after all, is part of wellness; self-compassion and embracing the messy that may come with real life, relationships and growth. Wellness is preventative (in other words, it is not reactive to illness, it is proactive toward well-being) in its very definition focusing on emotional, intellectual, creative, physical (nutrition, movement, sleep, etc.), social, spiritual and environmental aspects of self and world.
Resources:
What is Wellness?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5508938/