Our team was privileged to host the Sports Performance Innovation Forum at Bay Oval in September. Our first speaker was Dane Baker, one of New Zealand’s leading performance dieticians.

The SPI Forum is a celebration of human endeavour and advancement in sport performance. Each year it explores the emergence of new themes with a focus on the convergence of food nutrition (fuelling the body), equipment design (impact of technology in equipment) and athletic endeavour (physiology and psychology potential) - with distinct perspectives from leading professionals in the world of sports innovation.

Dane Baker has worked extensively with High Performance Sport New Zealand where he is a Senior Performance Nutritionist and has been a lead provider for the Black Ferns 7s, NZ Mens Hockey, NZ Swimming, as well as Chiefs and Blues rugby and the Rio Olympic support team. Dane is also involved with numerous research projects and is a guest lecturer in Sports Nutrition at Auckland and Otago University. Here is a few insights that Dane shared for those conscious of what you putting in for success.

The smallest of margins

Why is innovation in sports nutrition so important? One key point is the fact that elite level competition comes down to smallest of margins. At the mens single sculls finals at Rio Olympics in 2016, both Mahe Drysdale and Damir Martin finished at the exact same time; 6:41:34. Mahe Drysdale was awarded as the winner, decided on one thousandth (0.001) of a second. It came down to Mahe being about one centimetre (1cm) ahead of his competitor.

This illustrates how the athlete truly needs to be optimised, and the power innovation in sport nutrition can have. Changes in diet and nutrition may seem small, but they have the power to significantly influence athletic results in a realm where a faction of a second can be the difference between 1st and 4th.

Match Availability & The Demands of Real Performance

Having established the opening point towards athlete optimisation, Dane shared one important fundamental truth: winning teams win because they have higher match availability. Research which studied a series of major winning teams has shown that winning teams had higher match availability of their experienced players than their competition. Dane shared a slide illustrating the demands of Super Rugby, from game day energy to towards the weekly cycle of training, game day and recovery that gets repeated 21 times through the season with travel between time zones to play in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

Backing up and consecutive appearances is important, and to achieve that one must manage the demands of the sport, the travel and maintain high immunity. Injuries affect performance negatively.

So what does this all mean for my diet?

Omega-3 Fatty Acids help lower the effect of exercise on muscle damage

Every cell in the human body is surrounded by a membrane. A Phospholipid Bilayer surrounds this cell membrane. This bilayer has a high percentage of Omega-6 fatty acids. Omega-6 fatty acids are essential, however when too many of them are produced, they can promote a pro-inflammatory profile through the arachidonic acid pathway (inflammation). When Dane is suggesting having Omega-3 fatty acids, such as DHA and EPA (most commonly found in oily fish), the aim is to influence and change the make-up of the Phospholipid Bilayer. To change the ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3. Long chain Omega 3 fatty acids can be incorporated into the cell membrane through greater dietary intake which can then increase the fluidity of the cell membrane, receptor function and positively influence the release of pro-inflammatory mediators by the cell.

In their research findings, adding Omega-3 fatty acids resulted in reduced muscle soreness and better maintenance of explosive power in professional Rugby Union players.

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Phytochemicals – Anthocyanins

Phytochemicals are naturally occurring compounds produced by plants that contribute to their colour, flavour and smell. Phytochemicals have four main categories; Phenolics, Stilbenes, Lignans, and Flavonoids. Research is only beginning to understand what these compounds may do for human health. So far, Flavonoids have garnered the most interest. In the sports nutrition field, Dane has seen a lot of research in the area of Anthocyanins. Anthocyanins are coloured pigments responsible for the colours red, purple and blue in fruits and vegetables. Anthocyanin research is still ongoing, so the true capability has not been fully discovered yet, but Anthocyanins have already been proven to significantly reduce inflammation and post-exercise soreness. Anthocyanins rich foods include Blueberry, Sour Cherry, Pomegranate, Blackcurrant and Black plum, for example. What’s interesting, is that New Zealand Blackcurrants have a significantly higher level of Anthocyanins than any other, due to a range of factors unique to New Zealand (It’s pretty incredible- check out the graph of Anthocyanin concentration above!).

Stay tuned we have some exciting news coming soon in this space!

Caffeine and its impact on sleep and athletic lifestyle

Caffeine has been widely researched and proven as an ergogenic aid (performance enhancer) due to its effects on cognition and behaviour associated with improved sports performance, such as alertness, concentration, energy levels and feelings of fatigue. Naturally, it is widely used in performance sport, and is a staple in many people’s daily eating/drinking habits. Previous research has focused on these performance benefits, however new research is coming out about some of the nuances of caffeine use in sport, specifically the impact is may have on sleep and recovery.

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Dane discussed how caffeine ingestion can impact the subsequent ability to fall asleep and achieve high quality sleep. Even caffeine ingested 6 hours prior to bedtime, was found to reduce quantity, duration and quality of sleep. Dane discussed how this is of particular interest to his work in professional sporting contexts where competition often occurs in the evening, i.e. Super Rugby. The pre-competition caffeine intake by athletes may have a carry-on to sleep quality and duration, subsequently harming recovery and future performance (i.e. across a multi-day competition).

This raises an interesting perspective on one of the most used athletic performance enhancers and certainly presents an opportunity for solutions that don’t have negative effects on sleep and subsequent recovery and performance.

Energy Availability and Body Image

There has been research in New Zealand that observed a huge increase in young athletes dealing with body image pressure. It was observed that Super Rugby players struggled to balance eating and the pressure to look good, which can in turn lead to poorer athletic performance on the field. This drive for thinness and body dissatisfaction is associated with relative energy intake (the amount of calories players need to consume). Dane explained how Chiefs players were expending between 2000-3000 calories in a pre-season training day from exercise alone, but it was often hard to convince these players they needed to eat more for recovery. In the days of social media, players feel pressure to look good, such as “shredding” for music festivals and underwear advertising. There is a tension here between the anxiety about looking good, versus taking on the calories needed for athletic performance. These body image fears are holding players back.

This certainly casts an interesting perspective on a way technology is influencing professional sports. It’s also interesting as professional athletes tend to play a role of social influencers and as dietary and physique role models - yet even they are concerned about body image. How might social media play a role in nutrition education? Could professional athletes play a role in rewriting the societal norms of ‘looking good’ and energy consumption?

Special thanks to Dane for your involvement and support in this year’s SPI Forum.

Links:

Dane Baker SPI Forum 2019