The Health Compass Podcast
If you are interested in evidence-based information on all things health with lots of actionable take-homes, this podcast is for you..
The Health Compass Podcast
Exploring the Impact of Nutrition and Hydration on GAA Performance
With experience ranging from teaching, to working with athletes, to his current role in corporate and business environments, Rab offers a wealth of knowledge and insights.
As athletes know, nutrition and hydration strategies can make or break a performance. Rab shares his strategies for fueling and hydration, discussing the range of carbohydrate intake for optimal performance and the importance of hydration.
Ever wondered about the use of caffeine in sports? We have an entire segment dedicated to exploring the benefits of caffeine, its timing and dosage, and late-day implications.
Rab shares practical tips for amateur athletes too, from the importance of carbohydrate loading to optimal breakfast choices.
And for those curious about supplements, we delve into the potential benefits of creatine, vitamin D, omega-3, beetroot juice, cherry active, and beta alanine.
We wrap up with a thoughtful discussion about the brain's wiring and the significance of mental health in sports. Prepare to be enlightened as we unpack the complexities of health, fitness, and nutrition!
Rob, welcome to the Hell Compass podcast.
Speaker 2:Thanks, paul, appreciate it. Always good to chat to you and it's a real honor to be asked to come and chat to you on your podcast, for sure.
Speaker 1:First of all, a big thank you for Rob for helping me achieve a massive goal that I had over the last 20 weeks and that was to run a sub-train marathon. Anyone that knows me closely now that I suffer very badly with digestive issues and one of the biggest concerns for going under the trail barrier was the fueling throughout the race and also fueling pre-race. I was walking with Rob for 20 weeks and it's safe to say he got me to where I want to be, so a big thank you for that. I really appreciate that.
Speaker 2:No, again, pleasure to be able to work with that. I know that was in the back of my mind. I was like, okay, just make sure you get through it well enough that you don't try anything too experimental. But I know we'll jump into discussing that through the podcast. So, yeah, I'm just glad that you did it. I knew it was always going to be. You'd have the mindset for it. But making sure that you got the digestive side of things correct was a big issue for me. Making sure we covered that.
Speaker 1:There was no part that was needed anyway, that's for sure. So that's a success. Okay, Rob, so where have you come from to get to where you're currently at? Maybe academically, professionally, what you're currently doing at the minute, and then what you do, what you do?
Speaker 2:Sure, I think like to give kind of a background of me when I was in school. I always, I think, like this whole journey with you know nutrition and you know fitness, if you want to call it that or like human performance I guess more so is where we're trying to think about now. I started probably when I was 15 or 16. So my brother was big into training and stuff like that. He played rugby, like you know, just like he made the senior cup team in school and whatnot. And I was like, okay, cool, I want to kind of follow in those footsteps. But I just started going to the gym when I was 16. I think I pulled my hamstring or tore my hamstring, or maybe it just wasn't good enough to play rugby, and then I just started going to the gym. And as a 16 year old, your interest in that kind of progresses to the point where you start taking stupid stuff. You know, I remember there was something called like, I think, dark matter or something was just as glue like that. You thought it was going to be the thing that gave you all the muscle or whatnot, but it didn't. So that that interest kind of progressed to the point where I wanted to be a physio and it didn't get enough points for that.
Speaker 2:So when I went to college I did sell a molecular biology, so basically a three year science major with, like, a specializing in cell molecular biology in the fourth year. And then after that you're like, okay, cool, what can I do next? I started really getting into nutrition and I looked at nutrition masters. So there's two that I had the option of. One was in Scotland and one was in Colrain. And no, the one in Colrain is more dietetics based and you know, looking back maybe I should have done that one. But I went, ended up going to Aberdeen and I did a masters in human nutrition and metabolism. Up there I met with some pretty cool people, had a really small kind of cohort, it was just good to get, you know, a wider look at nutrition, but there wasn't much kind of practical experience. So when I came back I was kind of floating around trying to decide what to do.
Speaker 2:I ended up just taking a job to get things rolling and found myself in a kind of a teaching role, capacity and UCD for a while, just teaching, like about nutrition and sports nutrition at a basic level, and yeah, I sort of just really enjoyed that. And through that process, you know, people come up to you and say, hey, can you prepare me for this? It was during that kind of early phase where everyone wanted to, you know, be a bodybuilder and compete on stage or a figure athlete and I started working with people trying to prepare them for that and then kind of turned into working with some teams. So I worked with a couple of players from UCD soccer, ucdga, a couple of the swim team there, both the kind of the open coming academy and some of the other members. So I kind of got a really good broad spectrum of different sports, different kind of backgrounds, as well as taking on some clients from like a general health perspective.
Speaker 2:Then after that, I think I ended up getting work with Kilba Kutt, so working for the senior football team, I think the Inder County team, and we did some good work there. So we got, yeah, like first, first, first year there. We you know I'm not saying it was all me, it wasn't, but we got the team to, we got promoted and then the second year, working with them, we ended up winning the Inder County championship, which was, which was pretty big, and yeah, some good stuff happened along the way, did a lot of work figuring out how to work with teams at a large scale level, making sure everyone gets their own personalized approach, but the principles of what they're doing are all the same. And I ended up working with Dundalk as well during some of their some of their runs as well, which is again another good experience to have. And, yeah, working on a team perspective was really good.
Speaker 2:And now I kind of work primarily in like health promotion. So I kind of try to marry a lot of the approach that I would look at within nutrition as well as looking at other areas that might be important, and do that more in like a corporate or business environment. And this was the question of why I do what I do. I think it was back to I enjoy helping people. I think that's one of those kind of not a core value, but maybe it is, and I always try to find the best way to do that and it's right now. It's in that area. But I think you know, maybe going down another route in the future might be in the cards. But that's kind of that's kind of a quick break down to me like where I came from and what I do what I do right now, and maybe a little bit of why I do what I do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've all know it's an extremely it's extremely difficult to earn a living walk on with teams and athletes and it's a tough one, isn't it? And it's a small market in this country, you know, so it's, and it's probably saturated with with French nine culture sports nutritionists. There's a lot of people going for the same jobs, basically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I started in the last like three to five years. I've seen a change in the attitude towards nutrition, but I still think it's at the top, rather than filtering its way through kind of some of the smaller teams that perhaps do have like budget availability for that, but maybe that buy-in isn't there to be like. Well, actually this makes a difference for your team, on a like again, if you're thinking long term, and it actually makes a big difference getting that culture to buy into it and whatnot. But yeah, it's a hard one, you know, you have to work your way around a couple of different areas, but I think it's. I think there's a change, a large scale change on the horizon, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely definitely. Couple of years, definitely, as far as even if you look out where we're coming from from the GAA background, the budgets are getting bigger, even for the club teams. So you know, every year you know the budgets are getting bigger. And physio, s&c coach I think most top teams now will be looking for nutritionists in the next year or two. So we'll kick it off, rob. We're going to start with energy balance. Give people an understanding of how your body composition changes, and I think that kind of sets the tone for the rest of the questions, because we don't establish the principles of why your body might fluctuate and why it might fluctuate, gain muscle levels, body fat or is it versa? And I think the rest of it might go over some people's heads. So we'll start with energy balance. A brief enough, keep it simple.
Speaker 2:And then we'll go off on the mad tangents or give wild explanations on anything, but I suppose, at a very basic principle, obviously, as human beings we need energy to survive, to work on a day to day, and that covers kind of your basic requirements. You know, respiration, brain energy, concentration, all that stuff to stay alive. I think after that's when we start to add in, you know well, if we want to do activity, then we're going to be expanding a proportion of energy from that as well. And then from a food perspective, or from an energy intake perspective, if we, largely speaking, if we take in the same amount of energy from food and on a very new arbitrary basis, and that matches the amount of energy we expel via living generally, plus any of our extra activity, then give or take, you know, some minor fluctuations we should maintain our physical weight and how that relates to body composition here or there, but generally speaking that should be the case. Now, when we start to get into the idea of if a person is going to gain weight and change body composition over time in a manner that they are not, I suppose, fully engaged with, that's where, at a very basic level again, if we start to intake larger volumes of food via, I suppose, food sources etc. That are more, I suppose, more energy dense or have higher energy associated with them, then we'll start to see our body composition change. So we're in a like positive energy balance beyond what we normally would want to be. So if we want to like change our body composition in a manner that we want to address for our own reasons, etc. Etc. You flip the script a little bit. You will reduce your energy intake, either consciously, through changing those patterns of you know, high energy foods to more kind of neutral, or ones that are overall kind of not better for you but they have a better energy profile overall, like higher protein intakes, hopeful carbohydrate sources, etc. Etc. And with that in mind, then we should be able to see the change on the other side.
Speaker 2:Give and take, if everything was to stay stable, we should improve our body composition or change our weight on that front. So if, when we start to add in things like resistance training or cardiovascular activity, anything that increases our outputs, there will be like a need to modify the other side of that equation, so to speak, to manage that, because we'll get to a point where we can't just keep doing like eating less food and doing huge amounts of activity, because there'll be compensatory effects that our body will try to be like cool, we need to do something here because we're breaking down too much and that kind of gets into the later conversation I'm sure we'll have. But that is like a basic idea and we can add in things that can be, you know, managed, all that as well. So you know, we talk about daily physical activity like neat and things like that.
Speaker 2:That can be more manageable from like, I suppose, our internal physiological systems that keep that kind of energy balance equation, hypothetically speaking, in a decent enough range for us. But that at the bones of it is, you know, if all things were to be kept stable, if we ate the same amount of energy as we were to expand, we would see very little fluctuation in kind of body weight. If that was the thing we were looking at, body composition a little bit different, because you can tweak things more respectively in that way. But that's kind of a very basic brief break in. Hopefully that's been understandable for people.
Speaker 1:Perfect, rob. Yeah, I mean now we don't know that it's a highly complex topic. The calories in calories out so much more than milk more eat less, and we don't know that. But that's kind of the basis of it. You know we expand more energy than we consume, your weight generally goes down, and the more energy than we born off, we gain weight, and so that is a good intro I'll be into. So we know where we're at before we start. So we'll get into this. Let's get into the spectrum of. We know nutrition is important for sport, but we know it's less important in some sports and really make a break in other sports. So let's look at a spectrum. Let's start with failed sports, maybe it's level of importance, and then go true to what sports you think it has the most value for, maybe the least and the most and anywhere in between that you can think of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I suppose this can be.
Speaker 1:Now we know it's important in all sports.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think, like seasonality takes into account as well. So let's talk about like an in season field sport. So we're talking about games on a regular, plus training. I would say that preserving energy intake and maintaining it or keeping it high, probably at like the, it would be considerably important. So, like if we're looking like a maybe five being the top of it, like it would be four to a 4.5, maybe a five, depending on where about in the season you are. So it has a huge impact on performance at a field based level.
Speaker 2:And once you're in season, as you move a little bit further away, depending on your, your goal, perhaps and I know we'll probably jump into this a little bit more but like off season wise, depending on where you're at, you can tweak things a little bit more to To a different aspect. So your training element might start becoming more important. If, say, you have an athlete who, okay, cool, I need to put on a little bit more weight, like muscle wise, in order to keep up with the guys who are bigger than me, or I have the talent but I'm lacking that kind of size to compete with like the top to your guys, that's when the training out will be more important than nutrition, will be kind of like a secondary or secondary input that will benefit the primary input. On that, and as you move along into again the seasonality of, say, like you know, let's see, like an endurance based sport, so short term, like small endurance based, so like 510 case, as long as you have a good base of understanding where your basic principles on nutrition are solid, you can tweak that depending on what you need. So if you were to get like add a carbohydrate throughout the day and you're doing runs like later in the day, or the following, like that are five, you know between five and 10, you should be covered more or less. You might find, like from yourself personally, that you need a little bit more, but that can be tweaked for you personally rather than it being a key principle.
Speaker 2:And then as you get into the big distances, so you know 15 case onwards, like your half marathons, your marathons and ultra ones, if you're messing around, like you're messing around if you're not taking nutrition seriously because the energy demand is so high, both within the training element but also then the event itself, because you're not going to be running marathons to train for marathons, you're going to be running kind of different splits, different times, different intensities, and those are going to have significant energy demands. So that's why I like to frame it like within the seasonality perspective or some sports, but then within the actual framework of what you're doing in the seasonality perspective and then in the final four in, say, other sports. So I think it's probably always, if we're looking at a pyramid or like a hierarchy of like five being the most important, I would always rank between three and five, depending on where and when in the preparation for the thing is that's happening. That's the way I look at it.
Speaker 1:I'm talking about the core of you know that spot?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know there is that kind of like. There's a high speed element. Yeah, you know, like you know, you have to make sure that you've got enough juice in the tank for those repetitive motions. So I never say never, there's got to be something in there for them. I have I've never seen any kind of nutritional requirements for Lee Curling athletes, so maybe there's definitely someone doing the research on that I've taken the piss out of him.
Speaker 1:He probably can be a banger, that stick that they're on if they've seen the brush. So let's look at body composition for GA players. This is a question that I actually get asked a lot, sure, especially at an amateur level. I know it's all amateur, but I'm talking about the club scene myself. Yeah, because that's what we've been involved in players trying to say, lose a bit of body fat while in season, okay, and I know this is where this is what happens, you know, because I was genuinely come back in and probably take some two months, maybe six days, to get the flow of things again in terms of training. Yeah, and when the season starts, then they're looking to change body calm, and that's coming from experience. So we're in season.
Speaker 1:We're in season and we're looking to drop a bit of body fat and we're playing a match. Let's say it's early in the season. We're only doing one match a week as a part of the corner, because the air lads are Joe lads. They go Wednesday Saturday, Wednesday Saturday for nearly eight, 10 weeks at a period of 12 to summer, which is crazy. So if we're only we're early on in the season, we're playing. We're playing every Sunday morning. I'm looking to lose a little bit of body fat, get a little bit of the lawyer to move a little bit quicker. What approach would you take for that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this has, like this has come up Like a few times for sure when I've been working with guys and like, ideally and before we get into what I would do in that scenario ideally you have your your like off season and preseason to deal with that like, even if it's like four weeks, you can do some, you can do some training sessions in there to get guys into into playing shape, and then a little bit more because their demands are going to go up as you're doing a little bit more kind of like preseason stuff. Anyway, but in the case of your as you've outlined, you got one game a week, you've got a couple of games during the week. My approach would be, you know, like the traffic light system. You'd operate it in a way that you'd maintain your higher energies towards the, I suppose if you had like a training week, so you had like an intense training session on a Tuesday, maybe one on a Thursday and then obviously the game on Sunday you'd be doing your high energy nutrition intake, primarily carbohydrate, based on the Saturday into the Sunday for the game and then maybe on those two other days but the rest of the week. So you could operate it from a point of view of reducing calorie intake, hitting the protein intake a little bit on like a higher level and not reducing things so much the point where you're getting a negative effect within, like other training sessions so maybe like one or two gym sessions, that would be a day to and you're doing a lot more lifting focus, that would be ideally a time to do that you kind of prioritize Right what's not super energy demanding, because then I can do the the difficult thing of not having as high an energy intake on those days to try to shift the scales and try to shift the body composition in the direction that I want while not interfering with my performance outcomes.
Speaker 2:And again, not an ideal scenario but it's probably the best one to do in that kind of portion of the season where you would have huge energy demands coming from like multiple games coming in the pipeline. So again, you're probably looking at I don't know and shifting body weight and improving body composition, probably pulling it out a little bit more than you would like a different type of scenario where you could maybe do a little bit more of a dedicated reduction in that or change in that. So maybe if you're allowing someone say, we said four weeks and that's maybe you push it to six weeks because you can keep energy intake at a little bit more of a manageable level. And again, in this scenario, this is where a little bit of trial and error can come in as well, because you might find that for one particular athlete you can have them operate at maintenance energy intake and flip a little bit more protein intake, higher relative to carbohydrate intake and keep fats, if that's the approach they're taking and that might actually improve their body composition without changing their kind of energy requirements from a training perspective too much versus you might have someone that you might need to push a little bit harder within that, but because the increase in energy demands are higher, because they're coming from maybe like non activity into activity again, you'll actually see that change a little bit quicker. So that would be how I would try to approach it.
Speaker 2:Again, not the ideal scenario, but I know real world scenarios are rarely the ideal scenarios, but that's how I've worked before and we've gotten some pretty decent results within that framework and to some degree it can continue into the season, depending on the position as well as played. So that's kind of how I approach it before. That makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. So, basically, as a recap, you know, fueling the traffic leasing system, are fueling for the walk required, as Lee James Martin would say.
Speaker 1:Sure yeah you know we're fielding up for them high intensity sessions, but on the days where we're maybe doing a gym session, I do not know, we're keeping the carbohydrate slow and protein high and internal restricted in calories a little bit in order to see some kind of change. Yeah, perfect, grab Next one and gain and weight as a. I think I'm generally and I know it is changing. But when people talk about packing on a little bit of muscle instantly, they start trying to eat like a bodybuilder. And let's talk about how, both how, how. You obviously resistance trying to. We need to be doing a bit of volume in the gym. But from an nutritional perspective, you know recommendations and rate of gain maybe, and then maybe even how many calories are both maintenance? Then you might destroy for someone.
Speaker 2:And yeah, yeah, like for for athletes and it's an interesting one and it you know there are a lot of variables that go into it in terms like including like training age and like resistance training age, that kind of thing to work, like what experience they have. Like realistically, you'd have to set a boundary on. And this is also like, again, if we want to talk about the difficulty within like an amateur setup, and obviously what I mean by an amateur setup is like the sport is amateur. It's chatting with the coaching staff about what the expectation is for that player to gain weight, because you have to. And I've had these conversations where you talk a fine line of getting the player to increase their body weight, but not to the point where you're going to get the same weight when it's like fat mass relative to the position they need to play. So they still need to have good like field based outcomes and metrics relative to their increase in body weight. So you have to play a game of cool If we can increase. You know, I think I said a target before of maybe like 250 grams over kind of like a two to three week window. So if we see that for like an athlete is trying to improve. So if we have that we can push that up to 0.5 kilos if we want as well. But you have to be mindful of what that looks like for that athlete in that scenario. So again we look at okay, let's set a suitable threshold of, say, anywhere between 250 and 500 calories at first. If we find that that's not manageable for this particular athlete via, you know, appetite isn't there to do that kind of thing, or we find that's too fast to rate, then we'll drop it down to the lower rate and then we'll say let's stick with 250 calories and see what happens and in terms of how we allocate that, ideally it's a little bit more, you know, carbohydrate and protein focused at first, just ideally from the point of view of looking at creating more, I suppose, more muscle mass, inclined with that if it's to do with the training or the resistance training side of things.
Speaker 2:So I try and make it as easily digestible if it's an additional meal or if it's additional additional calories. And some athletes have a better response to this because you can just add more food to a particular plate or a particular meal. For others it's like Well, I'm not hungry as it is and that's why I have trouble adding weight, or they're like you know, and high energy guys anyway. They do a lot outside of that, like the sport environment, and that's why they struggle, because you're trying to match those energy intake. So that's where we would find a way.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's introduce, you know, more liquid, calorie based things, things that are easy to consume, not high energy by way of the things that we consume on a regular basis, but it'd be like cool, let's throw in like a shake, so maybe you get like one of those and have a more protein. Milks, you add in some oats to that, you add in like some yogurt, you add in some more fruit, you add in some peanut butter, something like that. Just anything that's quite palatable for them but also has a significant energy on the flip side of it. And then we see how that kind of works on a like a week to week basis from and from a weight perspective, from an energy perspective, from like a train perspective, from a lifts perspective. See how that influences and all the metrics that we want in a positive manner. That's typically how I've done things and I mean there are ways to tighten that up a little bit more, but generally speaking. We try and follow that kind of stepwise approach that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so basically a couple of hundred calories above maintenance calories, maybe 500 max, and I'm making sure when I get in and you spill over, and in terms of body fat gain as opposed to muscle mass game, we're going to get a little bit about. Obviously, surely we want to be building a little bit more muscle and what we eat to make. You know, people are going to be trying to bulk up and I eat the towels and calories of both maintenance and you know you're getting a loss. You're just going to get a lot, of, a hell of a lot of body fat there and because the love is you just a point of diminishing the tones when it comes to how the rate of which we can grow muscle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and like it's really, it's really important to look at this across the board in in sport, like that's why, again, getting buy in is so important. Because we look at, we look at, say, you know, I don't say, look at the Dublin team and you know, if you tracked the rate of kind of muscle gain or size gain, for a lot of these guys it's not been like, oh remember, like last year he was like this and this year's like this. It's not going to be like like that, it's going to be a progressive approach. Or even like the like some of the lads for the R and Ruby team see how they progress over time and like I'm a big fan of like American football and there's like it's the time you're for the draft and you see a lot of because they love their analytics and their data. And you see a guy who plays a particular position and he's gone from, like you know, college age or early college age, like 1718, up to like now, 21,.
Speaker 2:And you see kind of the timeframe of the amount of muscle mass they put on, put on over like four years. Like they've gone from maybe like 220 to 240 or 250. And that's kind of what we're looking at, but that's over like four years four years of investing in that kind of approach. So their performance on the field hasn't minimized because they've gained weight, but they have all the metrics that they need in order to be the better at their position. So we need to think about like that if we can eat out like a considerable amount of like weight gain and muscle, muscle gain for a particular season, that's a win. We do the same again next season and we do the same again season until you're at the point where you're like Grant I'm, this is what I want to maintain. So we need to think about it like that. But I know oftentimes that mindset is there, but that's an aside, I guess.
Speaker 1:There's lots of you which put in the preseason.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, that's the idea. Alright, I know I know a lot you're gonna have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I get them big. We might need some magical supplements to get them there. Yeah, yeah, six weeks, so like that's that's not over the bill and yeah, so it's the long term process. That's gonna, as consistency of a time, the same old story. You just has to be consistent and deal with in circles. If we go to say fueling for, let's say, we talk about kind of fueling for training, a little bit, a little bit more specific, maybe for fueling for match day, maybe match day like pre, the day before the game, day off, and then maybe half time if it's necessary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So like this one it's really the specifics are kind of cool because you can you can work within a set parameter that is outlined within the general and research like requirements. So for, like field based athletes, it's kind of in and you can be a little bit experimental here. So it's kind of in that five grams per kilogram range up to could be up to 12 in some cases, so like you can work within that range depending on where you're at. So what I meant by five grams per kilogram of body weight refers to carbohydrate intake. So for, and say, the day before a game we're kind of looking at like 24 hours out, like if we want to start 40 hours, generally speaking, it's advised don't go like to full ham on things like that, like if you have a normal day of eating. So if you've based your entire approach on having good nutritional principles for your sport, so just making sure you have adequate energy and take on a day to day basis, carbohydrate intake is solid enough, comes from useful sources for my sport and for like from a health perspective, then it's a lot easier when it comes to the loading parameters for match day. So say your match day is, or match time is like 12pm on a Sunday, on the Saturday, 24 hours at, you're starting from breakfast time with high carbohydrate sources. So you might say if I have porridge and like blueberries and a protein source for breakfast, I may be doubling up my porridge and or my own intake at that time or I'm adding another few you know familiar sources of carbohydrate around that meal and you might be saying for each and every other meal that day. But as the day goes on you're trying to minimize the like, the complexity of the carbohydrate sources, because you're trying to fill your muscle bellies, in your glycogen stores with carbohydrates in preparation for the activity that's coming up the next day. So you might start with like your oats and your your brain bread or whatever, and by the time it comes to like 10pm and you've had dinner and it might be like just white rice and a small amount of protein, you might top things off like with like some white bread or like some cheese or something like that, and that'll be okay. And the goal is to work into those ranges that I've outlined of five grams per kilogram of body weight of carbohydrate. If you're new to this whole process because it does take a little bit of getting used to if you're not used to this. If you're the more seasoned guy you might find, grant, I know I really peak in performance from like at a range of that 10 grams per kilogram body weight, so you can work it that way.
Speaker 2:And what happens to the rest of, like your macronutrient intake? Usually we try to keep fat at a stable amount or don't have a lot of high fat foods the day before. Don't choose that, just stick to stuff you used to maybe minimize it a little bit. Protein intakes have some, but obviously we want to try and prioritize our carbohydrate intakes in preparation for that. Now, what goes alongside of that is making sure you're adequately hydrated. So if you're used to taking a lot of water, do that the same way.
Speaker 2:I feel I still think we should be pushing water intake or fluid intake a little bit more. Make sure it's not just water, because you're going to be losing a lot of essential kind of like electrolytes in sport. So a little bit more things to do, like sports drinks because they sports etc do, or lights or whatever you want to use, whatever you're comfortable with and maybe it's your own homemade squash, all that kind of stuff and making sure that when you actually use the bathroom and everything's pretty clear, and we know that if things aren't clear, you're already dehydrated, so we don't want that happening on like the morning of the game as well. So water or fluid intake alongside of your increased carbohydrate demands somewhere on that range of five to 10 to 12 grams per kilogram body Don't start off the higher end if you've never done this before, because you'll just feel uncomfortable when you go to play the game.
Speaker 2:That's the worst thing that's possible. Everyone has a different kind of psychology. Before the game you might get butterflies in your stomach, might be nervous, and we know that. You know that can speed and you know gastrointestinal transit times and you don't want to be taking a quick one before you know you're running into the pitch. So know yourself what you're, what you're capable of, and that's why it's always good to test these things out as you get into the season. So don't be testing a new strategy like before, like a championship game, etc. Those kind of things that I would think about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perfect. So, feeling that before, and if you're not used to a high carb or high high intake, don't go slamming carbs in the conservative and then gradually build them as you can as you see fit in terms of the level of comfortableness in the in the tummy, as we know. If you, like Rob said there, if you know if it's, if it's all new and you know you stack out to the Hoyard ends of the recommendations, modern weekly.
Speaker 2:It's down to M badly, but yeah, now that was perfect and then even even just just started to interrupt you on that point.
Speaker 2:Even if you're looking at because during during a week, like in a in a like typical sports performance, like field based sports scenario, so like you might have higher intensity training sessions and this is where you can test out different levels of intakes, so you would kind of approach it in the same way.
Speaker 2:So if you had a training session like 7pm on a Tuesday, you might think about increasing your carburetor and take a little bit in like the 24 I window before training session so you might work in like that three to five gram range to see how you respond. And if you're fan like that Wow, I've never felt like that before in a training session that maybe mimics not all of a field based time and intensity but mimics elements of it, you find that like maybe like the sprint proportion of it or like some of the field based games a short distance kind of high speed stuff you find that you're actually performing a lot better. That's one of those moments to be like okay, cool, I did something from nutrition perspective that's really influenced performance in this kind of scenario. How do I extrapolate that into kind of the actual match based scenario, maybe down the line. So those are kind of things you want to think about.
Speaker 1:It's definitely trial and error, but not a match day yeah not. On the fourth round of the championship yeah, not at all. And I was going to talk about hydration, but you've touched on that just to recap. So, like the R allite, some Lucas a spot are some of the actual you know the SIS stuff. It's all good.
Speaker 1:Well personally, I find that the R allites are really good. They've helped me and they're easy to take the day before, or more and more If we touch on caffeine next, so say. I know it's like similar, common, similar principles to the car concept where you're not going to try slamming a lot of caffeine in on the fourth day on match day. But let's talk about caffeine first. What are those, the timing of it and how to start implemented within your training for match day?
Speaker 2:Yeah, caffeine is one of those things. Super useful on a day-to-day basis. I think that again personally, for me probably. No, I'm not dependent on it. Honestly, I'm not. I think I found my sweet spot in a cup of coffee in the morning, and then maybe something around one or two. That tends to be my coat of point.
Speaker 2:But for, from an athletic perspective, what you're going to get is this kind of like mild boost in like cognitive performance as well as just overall performance. So it's kind of one of the things that is going to help. It's not going to be like a difference maker. You might feel more focused, more prepared. There's a little bit more kind of like that boost in your kind of feel-based outcomes kind of thing. But and that's why we kind of introduce it Now, from a timing perspective, it's one of those things where it takes effect in that kind of 60 minute mark.
Speaker 2:So I suppose, like from a context perspective, we see plenty of times people like sipping on monsters like as they're going into the gym was like that's great, but you'll be feeling the effects of that in 60 minutes time. You won't be doing much from a from a make the performance enhancing effects in your session. Same will apply for like a field-based sports scenario or like a, you know, a training session. So you want to kind of think about okay, cool, I'm going to be playing at this time, my intake is going to be at this time, so we're thinking about an hour beforehand. And then we want to think about the amounts as well, and I think it's like you know, is it the three to six milligrams or two to four milligrams per kilogram body weight? It's kind of the thing where start off if you're new to it. Obviously don't go and don't go on the higher end of things with caffeine intake, Like I primarily used to advise.
Speaker 2:Grant, let's try. You know, the caffeine chewing gums are quite low and in terms of the amount of caffeine you're going to get, try that in like the timeframe before a game and see how you feel, or before like a pitch-based session and see how you feel. That's where we test a lot of these things in training sessions or in like pre-season training sessions before we actually get into a match-based scenarios, because you could find that you feel very uncomfortable with caffeine intake because we know it does, it has that effect. So those are the kinds of things that I would think about. So maybe start like if you're, if you can handle like coffee, like in and of itself, try like a cup of coffee and see how you respond from that kind of side of things. Don't go into the deeper end of like an energy drink straight away, which might be a little bit on the higher end of caffeine intake per serving versus, say, a cup of coffee as well. And the other thing you need to think about is the digestive effects that it has them, because essentially what caffeine will do is it speeds up intestinal transit or digestive transit. So this is, you know, the morning coffee and people go into the toilet is quite a well-documented phenomenon. But if you translate that into a pitch-based scenario, like a game-based scenario, where you've had a large volume of food, if you're doing the load properly into the next day and you have a morning coffee that you haven't introduced before, you will feel the effects of that when you go into the field. So all of the other stuff is putting elements of this into your training regime or your practices and seeing how you respond to it.
Speaker 2:And there's also the whole side of things of the half-life from a sleep perspective.
Speaker 2:So this is where I would advise caffeine intake too late from a training perspective. So if you have a late training session, I wouldn't be like ground let's have like a high volume of caffeine content. So say from like a monster, say from another energy drink before a training session. That's late in the evening because it'll affect your sleep. Even if you go to bed tired from the training session, there's still elements that will prevent you from having like a solid night's sleep, because caffeine has that effect it stays in your system for four to six hours. So you want to be a little bit more mindful of that. That's why you preserve it. Maybe get used to caffeine intake earlier in the day so that when it comes to games obviously special occasions require you to have some of that, but at least you are aware of how you respond to it when it comes to making sure that you are able to wind down sufficiently afterwards. So hopefully that's been kind of clear or I've jumped around a lot there, but I think those are important elements to a challenge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely from the perspective of having the caffeine overlaid and the counter to the toilet. That needs to be managed. Anyone who runs with me that's listening now is that way. Go out alone with literally two rals to toilet. Ral would be pockets. We've addressed that situation, rob, so good Also on that point.
Speaker 2:it's also important to recognize individuals, not psychology, but the way in which some people will find that they're okay from a jitters perspective before a game and other people find they do feel a lot more anxious and caffeine intake will amplify that, which is just something to be aware of. So sometimes it might not be prudent for an athlete to utilize that because it actually has a negative effect. So it amplifies that kind of like racing heart you might already have from just from nerves of going on a pitch. We know that those nerves are okay, but perhaps I'm applying that to a point where it might negatively impact how you're thinking and physiological performance on the field because of that might be something to do with it. So it is kind of a double edged sword in terms of whether or not an athlete should be taking caffeine, if we know it kind of pushes them a little bit in that direction. So I think that's just worth mentioning as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. If it's going to have a negative effect on performance, it needs to go. Yeah, don't be gradually belated In terms of just to get people to know their of how much caffeine from a milligram perspective, we're looking at 100 to 150 milligrams in a cup of coffee.
Speaker 2:Yeah, depending on how it's brewed and sourced and stuff like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then monster would probably be like 200.
Speaker 2:Monster is 150 to one, it's 150. Yeah, so 30 milligrams, or yeah, so it's about 150 in total. And then some of the other ones, like buying energy drink and the rain ones. They're up to 180. So they're pretty significant when you think about it. 180 would that's a large dose in a small volume. But because it tastes good, we actually dand that quite quickly.
Speaker 2:So you have a huge influx of caffeine over a very short space of time versus kind of like the sipping approach of the caffeine gums, which are quite minimal relative to it. So that's why you can increase your dosage of that by individual gum, like the chewing gum, rather than individual volume of liquid. So it's just to be mindful of that and see how each of these things is going to affect you. So if you respond quite well to just to a cup of coffee, that's probably good enough for a training session. If you find you need a little bit more, then maybe approach it like scale it up from there. Perhaps maybe go cup of coffee and then have one of the caffeine gums or something like that and see how you respond. That would be my suggestion in that scenario.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so just touch on back on it. So, as you said, if it affects performance, it goes. If it's affecting sleep which a modern weekly wheel, if you're taking an hour before a seven o'clock training session and we have to weigh it up, but in terms of what's the most important caffeine before a training or a good night's sleep and it's always going to be a good night's sleep after a heavy training session so it's just about the time in the caffeine and getting that nailed down. And I talked to a lot of people. They got to sleep around that cup of coffee at like seven o'clock. Well, like you said, they're probably still not getting that deep sleep, even though they may fall asleep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and that tends to be what we see. It affects, like the sleep architecture, sleep cycle quality In terms of how many times you go through. We follow through that kind of cycle that we need. So, yeah, you say, oh well, it got like eight hours, like it's grand, but it might not have been a quality eight hours that we know works with the whole system of like learning, a memory and like physiological recovery, particularly if it's a demanding training session.
Speaker 1:So with Neil Vaughn, rob, I'm just thinking about I'm going to put you on the spot here, right, I guess I'm just thinking because there's a lot in this we might do a part here on the endurance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it works for me.
Speaker 1:I think we're getting a lot out of this from the GAI lads. We love this, you know, so we'll keep going with the GAI. Everything for now? Sure, yeah, and obviously this can be related to mouse field sports, you know just about there, or just because we come from a GAI background.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I kind of refer you back to. So if we talk about just one thing actually about the field and for match day like if we're adequately field, it's a 60 minute match at club level do we need to be taken on something like half time?
Speaker 2:Here is where I think it comes down to the player. I think there can be a benefit for the player to do that from a mindset perspective, because it's what you've always done, and I think to change anything from a ritual or routine perspective can influence things. Either way, I think there's always a protocol to do something at that time frame because, depending on your position as well, if you're going to be doing a lot of sprinting back and forth, that's going to be your requirement and maybe for a goalkeeper perspective, there's no huge need for you to have a little bit of Luke's State Sport or whatever during halftime. But if you're someone who's been going up and down the pitch a lot, covering a lot of ground.
Speaker 1:Definitely not air goalkeeper. I need a fanbite as it is, I'm on time to piss out of that.
Speaker 2:It's that kind of thing to think about and I would always say, yeah, go for it. It's not going to do you any harm. In fact you might get that benefit out of it. We know there's that carbohydrate methrinse concept that existed for a while where you do see that kind of uptick in performance in a very short duration after it, that's just with the carbohydrate touching around the sensors of the math. Whether that plays out more long scale or long term, that's a different story. But doing that is useful.
Speaker 2:And again, you also need to think about in a perfect world you have all your players who have dialed in their nutrition approach, dialed in their loading approach. But we know that in amateur scenarios sometimes it's not possible. So you might have a guy who hasn't done the load to the full extent that they should have. They might get a real benefit from that halftime boost and it might be really important coming off that short term break going into the next half. We need to think about it that way. Same again for a guy who might be maybe getting his bearings with maybe the lower end of the intakes and it's found OK.
Speaker 2:I did the lower end of the carbohydrate load because it was the first time trying it, seeing how I'd respond digestively to it, I feel OK, but maybe I think I'm not eating it the most, so that might be really important for them to take on that halftime thing. And then there's also the impact of the hydration response to that as well. It's always going to be a good idea to take on some fluid, and if it's fluid in the form of a sports drink, where you are getting sodium and potassium back, ideal, it's needed. So I think there's always an opportunity to do that, and the benefits of doing that range from the nutrition all the way to the psychological side as well. So I think it's worthwhile doing that. Don't go like don't have a full meal halftime. Obviously it's not like that.
Speaker 1:Follow the pasta. Yeah, I think, just so. It's going to be context dependent on what the lowly problem card would look on an individual basis. And then, obviously, the Bainfeeer book is going to be the sports drink because, as you said, we're getting the hydration element to it as well, as opposed to, maybe, jellies, because that was actually one of the questions that I got on Instagram earlier was is it OK to eat jellies? And it probably is OK to eat jellies, but by looking at the maximum, as we said, a sports drink is going to be the double whammy there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you also have to think about what's your sweat rate loss? For some guys, that might be higher than others, and that's where the sports drink or the rehydration solution might play a bigger role than the jellies. For someone else, it might be OK, as you said before, it might be a little bit more seasoned. They know what they respond best to or what they prefer, and that's where you're going to get the whole thing of. Well, my preference is this, and if I perform as I usually perform with that preference, I'd rather not switch it out just because this is there. So it's one of the things where you want to be in line with your own personal routine. That's also best practice, but not just follow best practice if you feel that you respond better to say something else. That would be my advice on that front.
Speaker 1:And even on the loud and sort of things, like if we're talking about the morning of a match safe, for instance the Sunday morning game, and so much rolling out of bed an hour before that meeting, what's the quick go to there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's I mean especially if you haven't followed the protocol from the day before to the day before. Let's say that walking society, that walking the of kids, the just gets away from them a little bit. You wake up the next morning, the match is at 11,. You wake up at half-night and they're like for real, you need it, yeah it's the real world scenario Oftentimes when it comes to these games.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it'd be like cool, grab like a banana, grab a sports drink, and maybe, if you have any one of those like soaring loaves or something like that, something that's just going to give you a shot of glucose and energy and like hydration, all in a short space of time that you're going to need to have in order to perform at your best, while also then you're going to be someone who's going to actually avail of that half time boost as well.
Speaker 2:So it'll be always kind of like fluid plus electrolytes, then a an easily digestible source of carbohydrate, maybe mixed between glucose and fructose, like, like you know, bananas, primarily glucose, but maybe there's another piece of fruit that you're comfortable with, oranges, etc. Things like that. Stuff that isn't going to be too difficult to digest, it's going to be quite useful. It's going to be easy on the stomach because you know that's going to be a big factor if you have a short space of time, particularly if you're not used to intake large volumes of food etc over a short space of time and then maybe something like you could have your jellies in that scenario as well, a little bit closer to kick off rather than a little bit like wouldn't pay him back jellies first thing in the morning. I'd be like grand, grab banana, grab piece of fruit, etc.
Speaker 1:That's the breakfast of champions Rob.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is absolutely Like a hurry ball. Haribo Wham Softies and you know Diet Coke, so I thought you were right.
Speaker 1:So, if I look at it, we've covered the masses. Let's talk a little bit about recovery and then maybe we'll finish with supplementation. So yeah, from a recovery perspective, let's say from a gym session, and then just from the standard when a match fails session, we'll go with the gym session.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean again, I'll set this up as a prerequisite kind of thing of. I would assume in this case that the person who is trying to recover from a gym session has a firm grounding in nutritional principles overall. So we know what we're going to be doing in general. So best thing would probably be, depending on the intensity of the training session, a protein source within you know the error mark is absolutely fine. If it goes on, still fine, it's not a problem and there's still plenty of time to recover from that. But we ideally be sort of like searching for a protein source in isolation first, maybe if you want to eat it as best as possible, and then you get into your kind of main meal. So if we kind of think about if this is a late training session so say 7pm gym session, and finishing up like maybe 745, 8, because there's a short window time from a food point of view afterwards, that's when you like grant protein shake sooner enough afterwards, or like protein milk or something of that nature, and then when you get home, if you get the chance or when you're on your home, you grab something that fits the bill of like protein carbohydrate, a little bit of fat, whatever you're into, some vegetables etc. Ideally you can create something like that for yourself or you have something that looks like that already, but that would be my go to with that. If that gym session is perhaps earlier in the day, you've got a little bit more time to fill those remaining meals in the day with kind of like a protein, carbohydrate based and whole food source of things to really get the, I suppose, the maximum response from that training session. But again, I'd still, if it's convenience perspective or like thing to think about, I still always side with like grab a protein milk or know that you can get one nearby If you know there's going to be a little bit of a little between your and you finishing the session and you getting to have a meal of sorts. Now, when it comes to a match based scenario, it probably becomes a little bit more important to kickstart recovery as soon as possible, particularly when you get into the deeper part of the season where training sessions are really taking their toll on you and because you might be playing two games in a week, the intensity of the matches are higher. So that's when it's like grant. I definitely need to have a protein source very, very soon after, not because it's going to like if you miss it it's not going to be like problematic, but it's best practice to get get that into the system as soon as possible and then it's really making sure that the next meal is really centered around protein intake, quality carbohydrate intake and whatever else you want to fill the plate with is fine, but keeping that kind of pattern over time adequate.
Speaker 2:You also need to think about your, I suppose, electrolyte or like hydration considerations because, as you said, or as you mentioned earlier on, depending on the time of year, there's going to be, you know, considerable sweat loss to a lot more sweat loss based on a couple of different things and individual variants as well. So then you do need to think about cool, can I stay hydrated? So it's still going to be water based things or fluid based things, anything that has, you know, some element of electrolytes in it, which is also why something like a duorolite is really useful post game things like that. And then, as you go beyond, if you have, if you think you're going to have a lot of doms from stuff like that, like cherry active, like a little drop of that usually goes a long way to try to help that as well to some degree.
Speaker 2:So there's some individual variants in that front as well, but generally speaking that's the kind of the approach. So it's like cool, like if you're looking at hierarchy, protein by itself is, you know, convenient and quick. If possible for either scenario, then it's main meals that consist of protein and carbohydrate. If it's a very kind of demanding gym session, you might err a little bit higher on the carbohydrate intake and keep the protein intake stable enough and, depending on on on like your kind of personal preferences, and then you repeat that for however many meals you have, if it's later in the day, try to go protein protein with a less carbohydrate, or protein smaller meal with protein, etc. That kind of approach.
Speaker 1:Perfect and yeah, recovery is now it's, it's it's the confetti niche. You know where all these recovery realms and stuff like that. And I think we're talking. We're looking at a hierarchy of importance when it comes to recovery, to the ice bats and the compression and stocks and stuff. They're really down the scale of importance If the nutrition and the sleep is not yeah, absolutely Like.
Speaker 2:These are kind of things like they'll. They'll make a difference, I'm sure, at some stage. But if you're, you know, as we said, if you don't have a strong base of nutrition and a strong base of cool I'm definitely getting adequate sleep Like going to these kinds of things you might start experiencing a benefit in the short term, but a long term you're. You're missing out on things that are really going to make a difference to you, making sure you make it through a season like injury free and healthy and recovered.
Speaker 1:So there's no point going for six points out of the match. On them down the nice back to the next morning.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, you, you might walk up, you'll get. You'll get a decent like return of hydration from the few pints at first, and then you'll you'll feel a little bit wary afterwards and then I mean you could wander into the recovery room probably in a bit in a bit of a stupor. But you'd, you know, you might get something out of it, but wouldn't be ideal, wouldn't be ideal.
Speaker 1:And then, from a supplementation standpoint, we'll finish the supplement so sure, and cause this has actually gone really well. I'm happy with what we're getting out of this and I think the endurance side can be part of it. Yeah, absolutely fine. We can borrow your time again, of course. And so if we look at it's at the take of me and Rob, the bill for months to get this together because mainly because of me, honestly, but we will get the other one down soon as if we're looking at supplementation I mean not on what we're looking at from the perspective of what people, like you, said.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I like to touch back on on what Rob said was because if the 24 seven nutrition is not an order, you go on and slamming protein shake, saying post workout, it's not going to really make that much of a difference if you're not hitting your protein targets throughout the day and throughout the week. So it overall nutrition has to be really on point and then you know post workout stuff is just going to complement that and let's say all of that is in check. So we have a nutrition 24 seven nutrition, we have a recovery nutrition side, and then we're moving into supplementation and you may or may not have any recommendations for it. Watch your thoughts on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, I think it's probably you. Sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 1:Maybe what you think is important. What do you think is the way to throw it?
Speaker 2:I think it's more about what the expectation is for what these things are going to do for people, and I think it's important to frame like I would If I was to pick a handful of things. I mean, I'd probably pick, like like creatine and an omega-3 supplement, not from a like performance element, but just from a general health, like long-term health perspective for athletes or anyone who's kind of like really pushing things Probably vitamin D as well, just from that, also from an athletic performance as well, because there's some interesting data about athletes, vitamin D, muscle receptors and things like that, and also because we live in a climate that's, generally speaking, quite poor for vitamin D stores, vitamin D intake. So those are the kind of things I think of primarily. There are other things that could be worth, you know, shot in the dark. So you know, like the and I'll get into describing all the other ones in a second but, like you know, shots of like beetroot juice, quite useful from them, like a blood flow perspective, particularly if you don't eat a lot of things that contain a lot of nitrates and stuff like that. Those beta shots can be useful. We mentioned cherry active a little bit from a recovery piece and something that might be useful. There are other kind of things like like beta alanine and sodium bicarb. That might be more for the endurance only crowd, but you might get a bit of a benefit, particularly for some more seasoned athletes, with that intake. But I wouldn't be too pushed on those just yet.
Speaker 2:So let's think about primarily. Look, let's talk about creatine intake. Start there. Don't expect this massive like amazing experience from you know, taking a scoop in the morning at that. The way in which it works is it kind of gets stored. It's used in kind of like the high end or high output activity, short duration, like sprint, sprinty based stuff, and you see its usefulness. There we see a little bit of usefulness and in more longer term, medium term kind of intervals as well. But primarily if we have the ability to store it and take in more of it so we have our body stores will be able to use it more effectively. So that's why it's something to take Maybe you're long, maybe you know from the off season into your in season and then by the time you get to like the, the, the like deep in season part, you're at a maintenance dose where you're just lobbing in 5 milligrams per day as part of your overall routine anyway and there's no reason why you should stop doing that. And there's no negative effects from from taking it to well versed. And because, again, we also need to think about the health impact here and it's being looked at from like head trauma point of view and again got to think about J8 hurling and and football and there's a lot of impacts, both head and body, and so we need to think about if we take this as well. There's a little bit of a positive knock on effect no pun intended on that front and on and like head trauma. So recovery from things like that or mitigating the effects of it. So we need to think about its usefulness there as well.
Speaker 2:So creating 5 milligrams per day you don't need to. Or three to five milligrams a day, you don't need to load it. That's a little teaspoon or the little scoop that comes with it. So hydrates fine. Don't opt for any of the fancier things and don't don't like drown it in water. If you want to put it into water, just mix it in and drink it. You doesn't have to be dissolved. It's not something that is requires a liquid as as a medium, it's more a vehicle to take it if you don't like putting in your water.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, if, when it comes to vitamin D, as I mentioned, we're pretty poor geographically from getting adequate vitamin D from the sun, so it's it's it's good to take it as a supplement and recommendations wise, it's kind of a broad spectrum. It depends on on your, your own personal stores anyway, but, you know, recommended you could probably have maybe a couple of units per per day is absolutely fine. Or if you're someone who forgets it and over time you could probably take a large dose and that will cover you for a period of time until you think you can take it again. But again, in particular from an athlete point of view probably a little bit more important and to look at that as well, there's just some interesting data points on it being like available in muscle tissue, so I think it might be worth worth looking at that as well.
Speaker 2:Then the omega three thing If you're, if you eat a lot of oily fish, maybe not be, it's maybe not necessary, but if we're thinking like long term cardiovascular health, it's probably worth a shot as well and head your bets on a lot kind of front. So Because again, we're thinking about athlete from a person as well. So we want to make sure they're healthy across the full and lifespan of their careers and lives. You make that. It makes sense that way.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah the athletes. Health is the most important thing, and then performance has to be secondary. Yeah, 100%, and we're seeing the shift in that you know, even in sports, I think, and dependent on the sport as opposed, and yeah, and then in terms of stuff not to take, perhaps, maybe like stuff that's on the market, that is just probably a waste of money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I suppose like like standard approach, it falls across the board for your general pop as well. So again, I know the allure of like a fat burner in the context of an athlete is trying to draw a chain like boost body composition in the short term not useful and sometimes borderline dangerous in some circumstances, depending on where you end up finding this from. That would be one, and maybe like a mass gainer, probably not really useful. Tends like it can be hit or miss. I wouldn't advise it because you're probably better off getting the sources elsewhere. And if we go back to what we talked about early on, you don't need this huge surplus of energy and sometimes this is just an excessive surplus of energy. That's unnecessary.
Speaker 2:And again, you're not trying to be a bodybuilder, you're not trying to put on as much mass as possible. You're trying to be an athlete who maybe just needs like a little bit more muscle mass to maintain your performance, as you have against like heavier competition, that kind of thing. So you're not trying to be like the biggest dude on the pitch. It's unnecessary. And so those are the kind of things to think about. And then maybe a third one. I don't know, this is going to be a little bit controversial, but like you don't need an excessive amount of protein bars throughout the day and probably not like anything wrong with the odd one here or there, but don't get all your protein intakes in a day from protein bars, if it's possible to do that and maybe build it on other things as well. But that would be kind of, because I know it's kind of. There's a lot of them and they're great, they can be useful, but still wouldn't advise it to build everything off of those. That makes sense.
Speaker 1:I think the biggest benefit of the protein bars, if you're having one a day, is to stop you from eating the three dairy milks. The body composition was it. Yeah we're the cup of tea. Yeah absolutely yeah, but that yeah, because there is a lot out there from the supplement standpoint and you know you have to click back online and the kind of and from, not only from a performance perspective, especially from a fat loss perspective. It's just saturated with ads for supplements.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, like for a quick fix that won't happen enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah it's happened, but then there's a massive rebound.
Speaker 2:Yeah, avoid the teas, avoid the you know the special sachets. Avoid, like, even to some degree like pre-workout, unless the ingredient profile is fairly, you know, minimal, like, you know, caffeine, maybe one or two other bits and some creatine and like that would be fine, but then you're probably paying more for that versus, say, a cup of coffee or like as you talked about, like kind of monster or whatnot.
Speaker 1:Everythin' crap. I don't like where I was going, thinking about going to the endurance as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, lots of cover for sure.
Speaker 1:Because, yeah, we got some good shit there now. I'm really happy with that and I think anyone listening I think from especially any of the club lads or club girls that are listening across barocodes is there anything in particular from a female standpoint that you would touch on from a supplement standpoint?
Speaker 2:From a supplement standpoint, like? To be honest, I don't think so. I think cover your bases again the same thing is like cover your bases from good nutrition principles and energy intake and other bits and pieces can always be added on at the end, but they're not the ones that you want to shoot for. Like the same principles of trying to add a little bit more muscle relative to body composition again, to play at your best performance, to play where you feel comfortable, etc. Like those are the kind of same things.
Speaker 2:It's making these assumptions that there are things that are going to have to be added that maybe like at the very top of the things to do, but down at the bottom here we just still focus on our basic principles and our basic adequate energy intake. Like there might be a little bit more to do with like reds and relative energy deficiency, but that more comes from the approach of we talked about earlier of trying to manipulate body composition and still have this super high performance, when you know we try to not focus too much on that when we have to and separate them out when we can. So body composition can be improved at another point and we want to maximize performance and if you're trying to diet and reduce energy intake significantly and perform your best, you could end up in that kind of space that we don't want to really end up, which is that relative energy deficiency.
Speaker 1:So you know the times that they'll, if possible, is our season preseason. They try to get the body comp in check, and then you know, being adequately for fields going into preseason.
Speaker 1:But you know, as you said, you touched on some strategies that have, because we know that, you know, probably 67% of the time we're looking at someone trying to get it done in the season, which is fine, and then it can be done, and but look, I'm not going to keep you much longer. One more question because of the question at the end. So if you were to recommend three books, but anyone to read on general health doesn't have to be, you know, you know doesn't have to be performance based, it can be anything at all.
Speaker 1:So if you recommend three books, oh yeah, okay, cool, yeah, ground and it could be like I don't like the self help, like don't make sense self help. You know it could be.
Speaker 2:You know, from just a health perspective, yeah, I suppose I'll go a little bit. I'll try to be quite broad here. So there is a book I recently came across called 4000 weeks. It is by an author called Oliver Berkman. It's about time. So, rather than being the approach about like, oh, you need to be super effective with your time, it's a bit understanding time in the context of your life, and basically his whole, like the central premise of the book is realistic. People only have about 4000 weeks in their life, so think about that. Rather than being like I need to spend my time and allocate everything so it's really productive, versus sometimes it's okay to not be productive because it means you can pursue things that you enjoy, rather than being so time bound by being productive and getting more done. So it's kind of like, contrary to what we normally have now with like, oh, you have to be super, you know Pomodoro technique, everything you know, like I've only had 25 minutes with my friends, that's fine, because then I have to do something else. It's counter to that and it's quite, you know, it's quite thought provoking, quite moving in some parts, and also it gives you a firm dose of existential threat, or existential dread, I should say, but in a happy way in a happy way. So that's one.
Speaker 2:And there's a book called Finite and Infinite Games by James Kars which is kind of like a manifesto on living, to some degree kind of similar. It talks about it like the idea is that there are two types of games that we play in life ones that have like a definitive end, or players, I should say, that will try to end a game, and players that try to continue the game. And the whole idea is that you try to be an infinite player in that you keep the game going. So, whatever it is you do, you try and keep that going for many different reasons, for yourself or others. You try to involve other people in what you do. But it's really kind of reshort, kind of like a manifesto on sort of thing. So I really enjoyed that.
Speaker 2:And then the final one yeah, I suppose why not? It is a book called why Therapy Works. It's by a therapist called Louis Cosolino. He is like an academic in that kind of thing and this one's more of a breakdown of you know why their therapeutic approach works for people, how our brains are kind of wired for that like talks about, like mirror neurons and things and why talking things that kind of works. And again, because we're moving in the direction where mental health and kind of talking about these kind of things is way more open. It's a book that's worth the look and it kind of chapters are pretty simple and it gives a breakdown of like the brain but then also like the mode of relationships that we tend to find ourselves in and how that relates to kind of the context of therapy. So those would be my three. So four thousand weeks, find an infinite games and why Therapy Works. Those are my three books.
Speaker 1:Four thousand weeks sounds interesting. Yeah, it's good and all right. I'm going to end with that for Kara. Thank you very much for coming.
Speaker 2:No pleasure.