In the second episode of 4 that is exploring the best ways to optimise nutrition for performance, I interview Sports Nutritionist Alan McCubbin from Next Level Nutrition about the his take on science studies of nutrition and performance.
Alan is the person I turned to to get the latest nutrition trends and studies from the scientific community. His approach is balanced, but heavily supported by the scientific community of nutritionists.
Find out the answers to these questions:
What markers do you use to know if you’re getting the right balance?
Is tracking performance biomarkers through regular blood screening useful?
Are there any high level athletes or coaches using this in their planning?
What are some examples of high quality macronutrients?
Why the recent hate on Carbohydrates?
How about classic carbo loading - is this still applicable?
In a great article you wrote called - ‘sports-nutrition-strategies’ You compared the potential effect of different nutritional strategies, and having carbs during exercise seems to have yielded the best results on average for the studies you presented.
Can you discuss this further?
How about the quality of carbohydrates. Is there a difference in performance?
Carbs and sugar are often blamed for spiking blood sugar in the system. How can an athlete manage this better?
Do you see any value in continuous glucose monitoring?
How about other types of monitoring? The Australian Institute of Sport of validated the Sensewear device which is designed to measure the energy (kilojoule or calorie) expenditure over the day.
What are your current hydration recommendations adequate fluid intake?
You mention two interesting studies on your blog:
Can you talk a little about these two in relation to cycling?
Is this just a nutrition plan? or does it fall under ‘Periodised Nutrition’?
Where are the most gains to be had? Performance? Recovery?
What’s the biggest change someone can make for the least amount of effort?