Antioxidants and endurance performance: A supplement worth trying?
In endurance sport, there are a huge number of supplements that are purported to enhance performance, recovery, and adaptation, with very few of these actually living up to the hype. As scientists, we tend to be very sceptical of supplements and their claims, and prefer to wait for a body of literature to emerge supporting the use of a particular supplement. However, as practitioners and athletes, we also know that waiting for the scientific literature to catch-up sometimes risks leaving you missing out on a performance aid that your competitors may have taken advantage of. In this blog, we are going to talk about antioxidant supplementation, which might be one of the most discussed supplementation regimens in endurance sport.
So, what are antioxidants? To understand antioxidants, you first have to understand reactive oxygen species or ROS. ROS accumulates in muscle during high-intensity exercise, and ROS appears to have a fatiguing effect on muscle, possibly through effects on...
Should I Train With My Race Supplements?
- By Jeff Rothschild
Sports supplements are everywhere. Most don’t live up to their claims, but there are a few that actually do! When it comes to enhancing endurance performance, some of the most well-studied are sodium bicarbonate, beta-alanine, beetroot juice, and caffeine, each of which can typically offer ~1-3% improvements across a variety of endurance-related measures. Unfortunately, they typically don’t synergize and offer compounding benefits, but they can all help in different ways and at different times.
If supplements are good for helping you go faster on race day, what happens if you take them all the time?
Do they wear off and lose their effect? Can they continue to offer the same benefit? Can they actually help your training? I recently published a review paper on this topic (1) and wanted to share some of the key takeaways.After reviewing 100+ papers testing the effects of supplements on endurance training...