Aidan:
Hello and welcome to episode 160 of the Ideal Nutrition Podcast. My name is Aidan Muir and I’m here with my co-host, Leah Higl and today we’re going to be talking about supplements for endurance athletes. I don’t know how long this one is going to take. It depends how long or how thoroughly we go through everything. So we might split this into, we might do it in one. We’ll see how quickly we can get through it. But just as a general overview, I typically have what I’d call a food first, but not necessarily a food only approach to supplements.
If you look statistically speaking at elite athletes, almost every single one, not every single one, but almost every single one who is competing in the Olympics, at least based on the stats, takes some form of supplement. It depends on how broad you go with the definition. If you add sports gels and sports drinks into it, it’s almost 100%. If you make it a bit narrower, then it’s not as high, but it’s definitely a high percentage still. So I like to start with that by just being like, almost everyone is doing something around this.
But then with my simple philosophy on supplements, I would say if somebody is not getting the optimal amount of something through food and it’s potentially unrealistic or very, very inconvenient to get through food, there’s definitely worth considering supplementing. So we’re probably just going to go back and forth on this topic. We’re going to split it up into two sections. I don’t know if this is the best way of categorising it, but the first section is going to be broad supplements that are typically relevant for most endurance athletes. And then the second section is going to other supplements are going to be worth considering, but have much more niche applications.
Leah:
Starting really simple, we’re going to touch on sports gels. So for endurance athletes, the ability to take on carbohydrates during training and during races can be a very important factor in optimising performance. We can only store so much glycogen, so much carbohydrates in our muscles and our liver, that if we’re doing these endurance type sports, we’re probably going to utilise up majority of that and need to take on carbohydrates during an event, during training to keep performance high. So while sports gels, it’s like, it’s a good place to start. I don’t technically think of it as a supplement in that it’s more of like an easy food choice, but I guess technically we can kind of put it in here as a supplement.
But essentially it’s just a very convenient way to get food and carbs in while exercising. They are easily transportable. They’re very easy to consume. They’re also very easily digested. So we can avoid that gastrointestinal upset that may come from trying to consume whole foods during a race or during training. So it’s just a super helpful thing to have in your toolkit as an endurance athlete.
Aidan:
Yeah. And I don’t want to expand too much, like I saw somebody post once being like, I don’t use gels. I just eat potatoes. And then Sammy from our team, like put together like a chart that was like showing like, this is how many potatoes it would take to get the same amount of carbs as it would from like these three gels. And it was just like this huge amount of potatoes. You can see the convenience aspect there, which is part of what I was talking about. The next one is sports drinks. Basically the exact same as sports gels basically covers all of the same needs. It might be a little bit more likely to contain electrolytes. It will also obviously help with hydration needs as well. So same kind of concept, but just added with that hydration and potentially electrolytes as well.
Leah:
Caffeine can also be another really simple one to utilise as a performance supplement. So caffeine can be used to simply reduce perceived effort and pain perception. So we’re looking at about that dosage of one to three milligrams per kilo body weight around kind of 30 to 60 minutes before a session can lead to these kinds of outcomes. And then in higher quantities, it can even do things like improve muscle contractions and literally contribute to improved performance outcomes. So the kind of dosage there, we’re looking at like that three to six milligram per kilo amount of, sorry, three to six milligrams of caffeine per kilo body weight pre -session.
Caffeine can be taken in a lot of different forms. So you can obviously have it from coffee, things like pre caffeine tablets, caffeine gums, chews, as well as energy drinks. I think the thing to note here is for, particularly for those higher dosages, you ideally want something that you can be more accurate with dosing. So coffee itself, there’s quite a large discrepancy in how much caffeine is actually in like a shot of coffee. So it’s really hard to dose that in a way that is accurate. In those cases, I would be going for something like your caffeine tablets or even things like energy drinks where we know exactly how much caffeine we are getting. But again, a really good, easy thing to utilise for optimising performance.
Aidan:
Yeah. And a little add on for longer endurance events is little top -ups throughout the event. So like you’d go for that, like three to six milligrams per kilo before the event. And then the top -ups do not need to be much at all. Like they can be a small amount. Like researchers use equivalent of a can of Coke that has like 40 milligrams of caffeine. And there’s so many gels out there that have like 20 milligrams of caffeine. So it’s like, if you had like the equivalent of like two of those per hour, like that puts you in a really good position from a caffeine perspective throughout as well.
Probiotics is another one that is relevant for a lot of athletes. The research is actually pretty solid on immune function and athletes with high training loads. We see something along the lines of an average of about a 17% reduction in the risk of upper respiratory tract infections. And when you look at the impact that that has on training and competition, even if you, like you can look at the amount of days that people are off training by being sick, but then you can also look at how many days after that recovery, the training is still a bit impacted by it. So it’s like a 17% bit, like it’s not huge, but it also could help overall. So that’s pretty clear.
We have decent research on like just IBS type symptoms. So gut symptoms in the general population that probiotics help a little bit there. On average, does it help athletes for sure? Like if somebody had runners gut, like it’s hard to say there’s not heaps of research on that, but it’s like maybe it helps a little bit with that. And then there’s other potential performance improvements and maybe a reduction in inflammation as well that the research is like a little bit mixed in there. There’s not heaps of research on that, but every now and then a study will come out being like, these people took probiotics and then their race times improved a little bit. It’s like, I won’t read too much into that, but it’s worth being aware of even just for the immune stuff. makes sense to
Leah:
Next up is beetroot juice. So beetroot juice is something that I use quite regularly with a lot of my endurance athletes. And the main reason is that it’s really rich in nitrates, which can contribute to improved vasodilation, so better blood flow. The ideal dosage here appears to be around five to seven millimoles of nitrates for most people. And that taken around three hours before training or before an event. Now in terms of specifically from whole vegetables, we’re looking at 250 to 300 grams of nitrate -rich vegetables per day, which if we’re thinking about consuming that as actual food, obviously we can do that, but the timing of it can be much harder to organise.
So beetroot juice is a great way to do this effectively, where you can either have 500 mLs of beetroot juice, or what I recommend more often is 70 mLs of a beetroot juice concentrate. So where these nitrates are really concentrated in a small amount of volume and are very easy to take. an example would be the product called Beat It. So again, like a 70 mL shot of that in two to three hours before a training session. The effects of this typically last about 30 minutes. sorry. The effects typically 30 minutes to be noticeable and then peak after around 90 minutes and then last for like six to eight hours. And there is research to suggest that for events specifically, effects can be improved by taking this a couple of days prior or leading into an event plus on the day of as well. having like something like a beat it shot, the two days leading into an event and on the day of. Like I said, it can also be used in training, but personally how I utilise it with my athletes is it’s mainly something that I use for events specifically.
Aidan:
Yeah. And now that I’m like integrated into the endurance community, something I’m super conscious of is how much liquid people have before their events. Particularly if like they’re doing anything that’s like say the equivalent of like half marathon distance or longer, like anything that’s like well over an hour, to be honest. In that you want people to be well hydrated. That’s a start. But a common complaint, particularly for very long events is people like needing to urinate and just wanting to avoid that.
So it’s like if we had the option of a 70 mil concentrated shot versus a 500 mL like juice, like it makes sense to go with the smaller one. Same thing with the caffeine. It’s like if we had a 500 mL energy drink or we had like a no dose tablet, like it makes sense to go with that. So that way you can control your intake of fluid just through like water or something like that. And you’re not relying on being like, this is the supplement I’m using for this, but it comes alongside this amount of fluid. Talking through sodium and electrolytes.
I could go really deep on the research on this as to how complicated it is about whether this directly improves performance. But I think one thing that is safe to say is it probably makes sense to have a good baseline intake of this, particularly if the event is relatively long. At minimum, regardless of what the looks like, you can make some arguments around niche applications. Like even if the cramping stuff is complicated, for example, one clear argument that I’d make for is ability to help hold onto water.
Like if somebody had a high sodium intake, they hold onto water. That goes back to that urinate example where it’s like, you’re less likely to need to pee while you’re doing like a long event. And maybe because you’re holding onto more water, it’s like you’re being a little bit better hydrated as well. Like I can see stuff like that adding up over time, but complicated topic in general beyond the scope of this podcast, but I can see an argument for having sodium and electrolytes for most endurance athletes.
Leah:
The next one I’m going to have a little chat about is tart cherry juice or tart cherry extract. So this is really rich in antioxidants, which can improve recovery as well as lead to a reduction in inflammation just generally. So the dosage for this is we’re thinking around that kind of 500 mLs of juice twice per day, or again, what I tend to use in practice is more so a concentrate. So taking 30 mils of a tart cherry concentrate twice a day, usually in the morning and at night is kind of my general go-to recommendation. You can also get tart cherry extract powders and things like that, which you could also utilise.
I guess the main context I want to add around this is it’s not something that I will use with my athletes typically all year round, but something that we put in very specific phases of their training. So it might be more so in overreaching phases where there is quite a lot of recovery needed and the athlete is struggling to recover session to session. This could be something to add in to just enhance that recovery, less muscle soreness and things like leading into an event could be a great time to use it.
Again, to speed up the recovery and make sure an athlete feels really fresh on race or event day or through like a competition season where a lot of their training adaptations have already been made. It’s really about feeling good and making it from one race to the next whilst feeling the most recovered that we can possibly get. I think there’s a couple of reasons why I wouldn’t recommend taking this all year round.
The first is price, especially if we’re buying the concentrate and things like that. It can be a very expensive thing over time to be taking every single day, especially twice a day, if that’s how you’re utilising it. But the second is also this kind of, it’s just like a tougher one to go into, but basically having this really high intake of antioxidants so commonly could potentially blunt training adaptations because there are these inflammatory processes are actually an important part of your body making adaptations to training. So there is some concern around this potentially blunting those adaptations. So for that reason, even though it’s just kind of more theoretical at this point, we don’t have any strong data on it.
It’s another reason I’d point to and be, like okay, we probably shouldn’t need this all the time. If we do, maybe that’s an issue around fatigue management and training or other things lifestyle wise. But maybe there’s this like slight drawback that another reason we also shouldn’t be utilising it. And then just kind of wrapping that up is like a bit of a bonus to utilising tart cherry juice though, is that there is some research to suggest that it can aid in better sleep quality and longer sleep times due to having good content of melatonin and tryptophan. So having it before bed can, for some people, lead to improved sleep outcomes.
Aidan:
And for anybody who’s skeptical about that melatonin and tryptophan thing actually playing a role, obviously we’ve got the research showing that every study I’ve seen that has looked at sleep quality and quantity, there has been an improvement. But a lot of people pointed out that it’s so rare for foods to have a high enough melatonin content to actually have a meaningful translation to this. Tart cherry juice is actually one of the exceptions to this.
And going deep down the rabbit hole, like we’ve got this whole concept of about like tart cherries are five times higher in antioxidants than regular cherries. Then you juice it. It’s like, okay, now it’s even like higher. And then you concentrate that juice and suddenly you’ve just got this ridiculously high content. And you can suddenly see like, that’s part of why this is one of these outlier situations. We are breezing through this. think we try to do this all in one podcast.
Leah:
I reckon we can smash this out.
Aidan:
Yeah. So we’re going to go into that second category of other supplements that have more niche applications. I’m going to start with one that I’m going to argue probably has the most niche application and that is beta alanine. Beta alanine is only really relevant for quite intense events where you’re giving absolutely everything you can for less than 10 minutes. Anything where you really quote on quote feel that lactic acid buildup, those are the type of events that this will help with. The reason why I say it’s niche is it’s like, well, how many people would categorise that as an endurance event? I don’t know. It’s open to interpretation of the listener. I’m not a stickler for rules, but for somebody like us who have spent a lot of time in the powerlifting world, anything that took 10 minutes.
Leah:
Like that’s an endurance event.
Aidan:
So it’s like beta-alanine can help with that type of thing. There can be some niche scenarios where it could be beneficial for stuff like that.
Leah:
Yeah. And moving on to the next one, then I’m not going to spend too much time here, but it is protein powder. So again, this kind of falls for me into a category of like, I guess it’s a supplement, but it’s also kind of just a food at the end of the day. Essentially, it’s an easy and convenient way that can help you meet your protein requirements on a daily basis. And again, a good thing to have in your toolkit as any athlete, but including endurance athletes as well.
Aidan:
So now talking about one that is worth covering, I don’t necessarily think it should be a broad recommendation for endurance athletes, but I’ll talk through it. And that is creatine. So creatine doesn’t directly help with endurance performance. There was a recent study that this has been hypothesised for ages, but there was a recent study that was talking about how creatine can help for sprints and bursts. Like if somebody has a big hill that they’re running up or if they’re a cyclist and there is a sprint, like there is many small sections of an endurance race where it could be beneficial to have creatine. The other argument that I would potentially make is most endurance athletes should be doing some form of resistance training.
If you look at all the top endurance athletes, majority of them are doing something. They’re not all lifting heavy weights, but they’re doing some form of resistance training. And often when somebody gets an injury, they go see a physio and the physio gets them doing some form of resistance training. If we look at the research on creatine and rehab outcomes from a lot of those types of programs, people taking creatine typically get better outcomes with their rehab programs as well. So I’m also like, okay, maybe there’s an indirect benefit there.
It’s not as clear cut as all of the other things. It’s a real stretch, which is why I’ve put it into a separate category. But I think it’s worth knowing about. if you’re also on that hybrid athlete trend as well, just like everyone else, like you should probably be taking creatine anyway for other reasons too.
Leah:
Yeah. The next one is New Zealand blackcurrant. So this can be as a powder, extract, juice, concentrate. But essentially it’s really high in anthocyanins which can also improve vasodilation and reduce muscle soreness. But this is something that I not I don’t really use that much in practice with many of my endurance athletes because What is it doing that our beetroot juice and our tart cherry juice aren’t so they tend to be kind of my go-to’s in that particular space and then looking at research as well it has only found an average of a 0.45 % improvement in race times for endurance athletes, which is obviously not a ton. I mean, we wouldn’t expect like a huge percentage from one specific performance supplement just in general, because it really is the cherry on top stuff. But it is something like it is a very kind of small amount in improvement in race times. So again, it’s something that you could look into if you feel relevant, but not something I utilise all the time.
Aidan:
Yeah. I’m normally somebody who’s like, one, two, 3% improvement. Like when you’re chasing everything, that’s a big deal. But like, I don’t know, I put in my 5k time and I’m like, what’s a 0.4, 5 % improvement on this? Like the average pace is improved by like one to three seconds. And I’m like, it’s just not moving the needle. And like, I don’t know. So like, that’s my opinion. Normally I’m of the camp, but like, it seems like at least a 1% is what I’m looking at. And we see like beetroot juice improved by 1.5 % on average is my interpretation of the research. We see that adding gels in versus somebody who’s not taking on carbs improves it by even more than that. I’ve actually got an Instagram post coming up where I’m going to talk through percentage improvement scene and research just so we can kind of compare these things. Like obviously everyone’s going to get different results and stuff like that, but I’m going to add that on Instagram at some stage in the next month or so.
Anyway, I’m to talk about collagen now. So collagen, it’s something that has potential for helping with soft tissue injuries, things like tendon and ligament issues. We see these things crop up heaps, like I know heaps of runners with things like Achilles tendinopathy, and hamstring tendinopathy. I’ve talked in depth on other podcasts about how collagen might be useful for that, how the research is quite mixed and how to go about doing that. I would rather just direct there.
If you are interested in this, and that’s another key point that almost every single supplement that we are talking about today, if you just search the name of that supplement and you search ideal nutrition in Google after that, you’ll have a blog post that’s written by even myself, Leah, or somebody else in the team, which will give a much more thorough breakdown on this is how you use this supplement. This is what the dosage is and this is what the research shows.
Leah:
The next one we’ll chat about is glycerol. So I’m not going to spend much time here either but essentially this is something that we can utilise for hyperhydration. So glycerol helps the kidneys reabsorb more water, which in taking this pre -event with a high fluid intake and typically some sodium as well, we can hold onto more water than we typically would at a general baseline. So what this will allow is that there’s more of a buffer in the amount of fluid that we can lose during an event without reaching a dire level of dehydration.
The kind of standard number that gets thrown around is that even 2% dehydration or 2% loss of body mass from dehydration can lead to significantly reduced performance outcomes. So in situations where we aren’t able to keep up a fluid intake to avoid that 2 % reduction, maybe we don’t have access to fluid on a particular race, utilising hyper hydration methods can be useful for some athletes and glycerol can be a part of this process and how you go about doing that. I have written a very long blog post on glycerol on the Ideal Nutrition website that goes through exactly how to use it and the protocols around it and the different ways you can utilise it. If this is something that you’re interested in, I would definitely recommend going and checking that out. And then if you have any follow-up questions, my DMs are always open.
Aidan:
Omega 3s is another niche one in that I probably wouldn’t worry about it if you have a good Omega 3 intake, either through fish or plant -based options. But a lot of people don’t have good omega 3 intakes and their potential benefits are related to things like reduced muscle soreness, potentially better injury recovery as well, stuff around inflammation too. Then there’s some maybe some direct cardiovascular benefits. How much is this really improving endurance performance? Like this isn’t something that I’ve got clear percentages being like, this really matters or anything like that. But you can see bit of an argument for being like, okay, if you had a low intake, you would just sit through this, it might help your endurance performance, or it might also play a role in just general health stuff as well. You can see an argument for adding it in, but it’s that’s why it’s in this category, because it’s not as direct.
Leah:
Yeah. Next one is very similar is vitamin D. I think we should have like a little count tally of how many times this podcast we talk about vitamin D. It’s a lot. The tally would be high at this point, but it’s definitely worth having good vitamin D levels for any athlete. But looking at endurance athletes predominantly, we’re thinking about bone mineral density outcomes. Vitamin D is so important for good bone mineral density and preventing muscle, muscle loss, preventing bone loss, and then also reducing risk of illness.
So low vitamin D levels can impact the immune system so that it is easier for you to get sick. And if you’re an athlete getting sick frequently over the course of a season, this is obviously going to impact your overall performance outcomes from training and races, et cetera. So as like an overarching thing, it’s like, it’s worth being aware of and potentially supplementing with if you’re low or struggle to maintain good levels through food alone.
Aidan:
Yeah. And part of why we talk about vitamin D so much is like with mine and our content, I’m not just trying to put information out there just for information sake. I’m kind of like, are you doing anything with this information? Like it’s good to have it, but it’s like, if you, you’ve listened to me a lot and you’re like, maybe I have low vitamin D and you haven’t tested it or you haven’t done something, it’s like, maybe now’s the time. Maybe now’s the time. Yeah, it’s like, if you don’t get heaps of sun, it’s worth testing. Like it’s such a simple thing. This is part of why we talk about heat, because it’s like, maybe it will improve your bone marrow density. Maybe you will get sick less frequently. There’s a bunch of reasons. Like it’s just one of the simplest things. Like there’s a lot of advice I give that is hard to actually implement, but this is something that’s pretty simple.
Another simple segue that we have here is multivitamins. And where does this fit in? If somebody had a relatively poor diet in terms of micronutrient intake, and there’s a lot of gaps that need to be covered, I would look at multivitamin supplementation. With endurance athletes. Like really, how often is this going to be an issue? Because endurance athletes typically have pretty good calorie intakes because they need to eat a decent amount of calories. Even if they’re in a small deficit, like they’re still eating a lot of calories and they’re getting a lot of micronutrients coming in, assuming they have a decent
But if there are clear gaps, whether it’s, don’t know, fussy eating, access to food, there could be a variety of reasons. Sometimes it makes sense to go with a multivitamin to cover these gaps, and then that could translate to improved performance by covering those gaps. We covered a lot of supplements just then.
Leah:
We breezed through that, so I’m actually pretty stoked. Obviously, as a bit of a summary, it would be unnecessary to take all of these supplements. Look, some of them overlap, some of them are not necessarily going to be specific to you, your sport and your needs. So it’s definitely worth picking and choosing based on you as an individual and what you think you will benefit from. But overall, these are things to at least consider as an endurance athlete.
Aidan:
So when I was saying go to this blog post and stuff like that, we will actually compile this all in a resource. Like we’ll just put it in the show notes. So you can literally just go to show notes and then click on any of those individual links if you are interested in any of these supplements and learning bit more about them. But apart from this, this has been episode 160 of the audio nutrition podcast. If you haven’t already, if you could please leave a rating review that would be massively appreciated.