SUPER PRACTICAL - January 2025
Quick, actionable steps from studies I shared this month.
This is the second edition of SUPER PRACTICAL and it covers the studies I shared in the first four weeks of 2025. You can read the first edition here which covered studies from December 2024.
SUPER PRACTICAL is a newsletter for my paid subscribers. Only these first two editions are for everyone so if you want to keep receiving it you need to become a paid subscriber.
Each item in the list has a link to the original newsletter with all the details and related research. Just click on the DO, MAYBE, or DON’T.
[Note: paid subscribers have access to all the newsletters in the archives.]
DO these things
DO: Focus on frequency of training at sub-threshold effort for newer athletes or athletes returning to training. These intensities promote positive experiences and long-term adherence to exercise routines.
DO: Taper before races. If fatigue is moderate, follow a standard taper model; if fatigue is high, use a larger decrease in training volume or a longer taper; and if the athlete is overreached, use a long taper with proactive recovery methods.
DO: Use field tests to help monitor training fatigue and training progress. Field tests appear to be a reproducible method for estimating endurance performance.
DO: Perform dynamic stretching before training or racing. Dynamic stretching resulted in negligible changes in RE but significantly improved running performance.
DO: Trust that it’s possible to return to better shape and performance after a long break. In a case study, a 53-year old athlete managed to return to higher levels of performance even after a 12-week pause in training.
DO: Test for iron deficiency and supplement (especially female athletes). In female athletes, endurance performance decreased by 3%–4% in iron-deficient athletes but improved by 2%–20% with supplementation.
DO: Include two longer interval sessions rather than four shorter interval sessions in a weekly training plan. This approach promotes endurance adaptations and allows sufficient recovery, enhancing both performance and exercise efficiency.
MAYBE try these things
MAYBE: Drink a BCAAs-containing electrolyte beverage during races. This may help reduce dehydration, maintain electrolyte balance, and minimise muscle damage.
MAYBE: Use AI to help create nutrition plans. The averaged AI model outperformed the general population by 31 percentage points and ultra-endurance athletes by 20 percentage points in overall knowledge.
MAYBE: Incorporate cycling or other means of cross-training to reduce the potential fatigue-related impacts on the nervous system. Different types of training have different mechanisms of fatigue and it’s useful to balance these.
MAYBE: Eat a high-carb, low glycaemic index diet to improve endurance performance. This diet appeared superior to both a high-carb, high GI diet and a low-carb, high-fat diet for endurance athletes.
MAYBE: Try ketone supplements for recovery. KE intake did not affect muscle glycogen resynthesis but led to faster lowering of post-exercise AMPK phosphorylation and higher mTORC1 activation.
DON’T do these things
DON’T: Drink alcohol after key training sessions. Even when ingesting whey protein post-exercise, the reduction in muscle protein synthesis from the alcohol consumption was significant.
DON’T: Skip post-training nutrition. Delayed carbohydrate intake reduced next-day high-intensity interval capacity by 5 intervals and increased perceived effort.
DON’T: Take performance enhancing drugs. Anabolic steroids, growth hormone, and recombinant human erythropoietin all resulted in significant negative health consequences.
DON’T: Rely on muscle soreness as an indicator to decide when to train hard again. When assessing muscle damage from eccentric exercise, relying solely on DOMS may not provide an accurate picture.
DON’T: Use wearables or devices to try and perfect your nutrition. While there is some evidence that there are correlations that could be used in theory, any sort of practical application requires more evidence and better guidelines.
DON’T: Use carbon-plated trail shoes for technical trail races. Carbon-plated trail shoes may not enhance performance for uphill or technical terrain running due to increased metabolic power requirements.
DON’T: Worry about an interference effect when performing concurrent strength and endurance training. There did not appear to be a significant impact on either strength or endurance adaptations when performing these types of sessions.
This is a cool bonus! Enjoyed it.