In a story that has rocked the triathlon world, it has just been announced that American professional Collin Chartier tested positive for the banned substance erythropoietin – or EPO – in an out-of-competition test in February. Chartier, made miraculous strides up the ranks last year, winning the PTO US Open in Dallas.

There had been an immense amount of chatter in this space over the last day or so. And the bottom line is, doping in this manner (in addition to any manner) gives a huge competitive advantage. A clean sport is absolute paramount for fair competition, and our sport. So in this blog, I am going to do a bit of a deep dive into EPO, how it works, and the effect it has on performance – which is why it is often the drug of choice for those seeking to climb up the podium by means other than hard work and discipline in training. I have written a fair bit about EPO recently, after a couple of studies have been published demonstrating that ketone supplements...

- Adam Storey, PhD

How “easily” we can perform a specific movement or task is a critical determinant of  Long Distance Triathlon (LDT). For example, to run a 3-hour marathon (an excellent running time in an Ironman Distance Triathlon) the average pace is  4:16 min/km. There are many athletes who can run 4:16 for 1 km; the issue most athletes face is that they simply can’t do it easily enough to do it 42 times back-to-back. In their online course Endure IQ LDT 102: Training Program Fundamentals for Long Distance Triathlon, Dan and the team at Endure IQ go through the rationale regarding how, for LDT, it’s likely better to focus on “specific strength” rather than lifting heavy weights in the gym. However, gym-based exercises where the main focus is to improve movement efficiency are still likely to be very beneficial, and, moreover, can be completed is less than 20 minutes; a key consideration for the time-poor long distance...

- Professor Grant Schofield and Dr Daniel Plews 

We’ve watched  the battleground in diet shift recently from debates around saturated fat, and eating more healthy whole grains, to a largely vegan agenda. The ideology of the Garden of Eden diet, is close to the vegan ideals driven primarily through the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and touted as a recruitment strategy (or “health ministry”). Recently, it's gone to greater levels. The Netflix doco “Game Changers” has seen widespread discussion around this topic, and we’ve been fielding a lot of questions around this of late. This blog is our attempt to sum up our thoughts.

We’ve listed the pros, neutrals, and cons of adopting such a diet for general health and when in the context of sports performance. There are many ways that you can approach this topic, from health, sustainability, moral and personal perspectives to a sports performance perspective. We'll be tackling a few...