DISCUSSION QUESTION IN SPORTS MANAGEMENT

F O R E W O R D

Recent Advances in Sports Nutrition

L. L. Spriet

Published online: 26 April 2014

� The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com

The interest in ‘sports nutrition’ has never been greater. We

all know that diet affects athletic performance and that a

sound nutritional plan lets an athlete be the best they can be

in competition. However, nutrition also plays a large role in

the training, adaptation, and preparation for competitions

and in the recovery from training and competitions. How

well we adapt to, and recover from, one training session or

competition often dictates how well we perform in the next

training session or competition. The goals of training ses-

sions will also vary in the preparation for competitions.

Therefore, sports nutrition is a full-time endeavour in the

life of an athlete.

We continually learn more about the importance of

nutrition as it relates to sport. Even our basic understanding

of the metabolism and interaction of fat and carbohydrate,

the major fuels for most forms of exercise, continues to

grow. For example, we now know that the regulation of fat

metabolism is very complex, with as many sites of regu-

lation as has been demonstrated with carbohydrate

metabolism. There has also been increasing interest in the

importance of nutrition for the brain in training and com-

petitions, although this information is more difficult to

obtain. However, while we advance the knowledge of basic

sports nutrition, many practical questions also remain and

garner significant research interest.

Athletic performance in many training and competition

situations can be optimized with fluid and carbohydrate

intake, but are there other nutrients such as protein that

could enhance performance, reduce muscle damage, or

stimulate protein synthesis? Also, can the adaptations that

occur during training be maximized with suboptimal fluid

and carbohydrate status or a variety of nutritional approa-

ches? Training-induced adaptations have been studied in

traditional organs such as skeletal muscles, but how do

other organs, such as the brain and gastrointestinal tract,

adapt? In addition, how important are these adaptations for

improving athletic performance? Many aspects of these

issues are explored in this supplement.

Proper nutrition in the recovery from exercise is also

important for maximizing muscular repair, adaptation and

hypertrophy, reloading fuel, and improving the ability to

sleep and the quality of sleep. If an athlete is well-trained,

has a sound nutrition plan, sleeps well, and is healthy, can

nutritional supplements such as dietary nitrate or poly-

phenols help with training, competitions or recovery?

One thing that is very clear is the variability that exists

between athletes in almost everything we study. Most

coaches, trainers, and sports nutritionists would agree that

the increasing amount of information we gather on our

athletes leads us to personalize the advice and recom-

mendations we give athletes.

The Gatorade Sports Science Institute (GSSI) brought

together researchers for a meeting in April 2012 to discuss

many topics of recent interest in the sports nutrition world.

Following the meeting, authors were asked to summarize

the recent work in their topic, resulting in the manuscripts

in this supplement in Sports Medicine.

Lawrence L. Spriet, PhD

Guest Editor

Acknowledgements This article was published in a supplement supported by Gatorade Sports Science Institute. The supplement was

guest edited by Lawrence L. Spriet who attended a meeting of the

Gatorade Sports Science Institute (GSSI) expert panel in April 2012

L. L. Spriet (&) Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences,

University of Guelph, Room 354, ANNU Building, Guelph,

ON N1G 2W1, Canada

e-mail: [email protected]

123

Sports Med (2014) 44 (Suppl 1):S3–S4

DOI 10.1007/s40279-014-0170-1

and received honoraria from the GSSI, a division of PepsiCo, Inc., for

his meeting participation and the writing of his manuscript. He has

not received any honoraria for guest editing the supplement. L.L.S.

selected peer reviewers for each paper and managed the process.

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, dis-

tribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original

author(s) and the source are credited.

123

S4 L. L. Spriet

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.