Nutritional Strategies for Optimizing Elite Endurance Exercise Performance - Prof. Jeukendrup

Invited Session at ECSS MetropolisRuhr 2017 "Strategies for Optimizing Elite Endurance Exercise Performance"
Nutritional Strategies for Optimizing Elite Endurance Exercise Performance
Jeukendrup, A. E.
Loughborough University
Especially in endurance sport nutrition has been shown to be an important factor. Nutrition plays an important role in performance during an event, the recovery from exercise and the adaptation long term.
It has been known since the 1960s that muscle glycogen plays an important role and as such strategies to start exercise with high glycogen stores have received a lot of attention. Also carbohydrate and fluid intake during exercise have been shown to have ergogenic effects by preventing drops in carbohydrate oxidation, blood glucose concentrations and dehydration. There are guidelines that give advice based on the duration of exercise and based on the daily training volume. There is no distinction between the guidelines for men and women, for trained and untrained athletes and for young and older athletes. Partly this is because most research is done in young men who are by no means elite athletes (and also do not represent the recreational end of the spectrum of athletes). Partly, however, this is based on a limited number of studies that show no difference in carbohydrate delivery in trained and untrained, men and women. In some events gut function (delivery of fluids and carbohydrate) is critical and therefore “training the gut” is an often recommended strategy.
The gut is an extremely plastic organ that can adapt relatively quickly to different stimuli (dietary changes). There are a number of other ergogenic aids that are often used by athletes. Caffeine is the one with the most evidence. Even relatively low doses (3 mg/kg) of caffeine seem to have effects on endurance performance. Other supplements like nitrates (beet root juice), bicarbonate and beta-alanine have much less evidence, especially in very well trained athletes.
Recovery is an important factor especially with repeated days of hard training and competition. In this phase, replenishing carbohydrates and fluids are the main factors. Protein is often consumed by athletes but evidence that this affects short term recovery is scarce. The effects of protein are believed to be longer term effects where we refer to “recovery” as training adaptation. It is also believed that some measures to speed up short term recovery could actually harm long training adaptation. Therefore, the goals of nutrition interventions must be very clear. Sound nutrition planning for athletes involves a strategy and a planned approach. This is often referred to as periodized nutritrion, a long term plan is created that takes into account both short term and long term goals, with the ultimate goal to optimise the athlete’s performance.

[@ChrisPCycling]

thx a lot, the explanation at 22:00 is what i was exactly looking for.

[@greybeardedbard]

Where can I find the other parts of this lecture?