Legal nutritional supplements during a sporting event

Abstract

Nutrition significantly influences sports performance; however, the efficacy of any nutritional supplement or strategy should be carefully considered in relation to the event and the sex, training and nutritional status of the participant. The causes of fatigue, mechanism of action, safety and legality of the supplement, together with the scientific evidence from studies with an appropriate experimental design, should all be taken into account before incorporating into the training and/or competition diet. The efficacy of ingesting nutritional supplements immediately before and/or during endurance exercise (duration 45–180 min) is reviewed in this chapter. The ingestion of CES (carbohydrate-electrolyte solutions) have been shown to improve both exercise capacity and performance, either due to the maintenance of euglycaemia throughout exercise or the sparing of muscle glycogen early on in exercise. The addition of caffeine to CES may improve endurance performance as a consequence of a reduced perception of effort. Research suggests that the addition of protein to CES may only be effective when a suboptimal amount of CHO (carbohydrate) is ingested during exercise (<60 g of CHO⋅h−1); however, recovery of performance may be enhanced due to a reduction in subsequent muscle soreness and the promotion of muscle protein synthesis after exercise. The findings from studies investigating the effects of ingesting MCTs (medium-chain triacylglycerols) and BCAAs (branched-chain amino acids), either on their own or in combination with CES, on endurance performance have been equivocal and therefore would not be recommended. Any nutritional strategy should be practised in training before being used during a competition.