(birds chirping)
(wheels clicking)
- [Man] Yeah!
Mornin', Trainiacs.
That was just a nice little cruisy Saturday morning.
I think 82k
kind of ride
Just kept
nice and breezy.
Really no calories, only thing that's in here
are exogenous ketones
and amino acids.
That's all I took. Throughout the entire ride.
Nothing but that. Three hours.
Just liquid.
Barely any calories.
(wheels clicking)
So over the past few months, on the Triathlon Taren Podcast,
which just happens to be the highest-rated triathlon podcast
in the world on Apple Podcasts,
we have been interviewing
a lot of sports scientists and we've got into,
a lot of, like, supplementation.
What are the best supplements for endurance athletes?
So, today we're gonna rattle off
some of those awesome supplements.
For strength, for stamina, for endurance, for fat loss,
for fat oxidation, just for looking good, too.
And while we're doing that, (wheels clicking)
(door closes)
also rattle off, (footsteps)
because we've talked about this with a lot of these experts:
What are some of the supplements that are over-hyped
that you don't need to spend your money on?
Let's do it.
(electronic music)
All right, Trainiacs, let's talk about
the best supplements
that triathletes will use.
So, I'm gonna preface this by saying,
that you might see me trying, researching, talking
about a lot of supplements.
Well in a lot of cases, that's just because this is my job.
It's not because it's what I believe
everyone should be taking.
So what I'm going to outline, are some of
the more common supplements that everyone is hearing about.
And I'm going to put them into one of three buckets.
One, being supplements that, yes, just about everyone
should at least think about taking.
Number two, supplements that could
be beneficial in the right circumstance.
Number three, supplements that are over-hyped.
So let's start off with the supplements
that I think a lot of people should be taking.
The first one is vitamin D.
We heard Lionel Sanders talking about
how he was deficient in vitamin D, despite being outside.
Couple years ago, I was deficient in vitamin D,
despite being outside.
What we're finding is that because the food supply
is starting to become less and less natural,
and the soil is getting more and more depleted,
as we just kind of become more populated
all around the world, there's less and less Vitamin D
that is able to get into our system.
So a lot of people end up being deficient in vitamin D,
regardless of how much sun they get.
Commonly, the fix for this is just superdose with vitamin D.
But
you aren't really going to be able to
absorb that vitamin D if you don't pair it with
E,
and K.
So, a stack of vitamin D, E, and K,
will help a lot of athletes.
And why do we care about this?
Well, vitamin D is one of, like, the precursor vitamins
to making sure that all of our hormones are healthy,
and for all of us who are trying to perform
at a high level, it's very taxing on our hormones.
So this is an important thing to make sure is in place.
Next is magnesium.
Somewhere around 80% of the North American population
is deficient in magnesium.
Now, magnesium is important because
it has a lot to do with actually
the firing of muscles. (fingers snapping)
And if we aren't able to fire our muscles
as efficiently, probably not going to perform very well.
There are all different kinds of magnesium
that people can take.
You can take magnesium to help get you to sleep.
You can take magnesium in a pill form.
You take magnesium from a topical spray.
What I like to use is
Ease Magnesium.
Kinda hard to find, but it's one
of the most bio-available topical magnesiums
that you could put on
and it helps you get to sleep a little bit.
Next is iron.
There was a study done years and years ago,
where they basically put a few groups of mice
into water and they let them swim until they drowned.
There was one group, however, that was able to swim
basically indefinitely, and they had to take the mice out
and say, "All right, you guys passed."
And what they thought at the time,
was that it was liver that was, like,
the superfood that was allowing them to do this.
Actually looking back on this decades later,
what researchers found is that
the other groups of mice that drowned were anemic.
They were low in iron,
and that liver actually increased the iron.
Now, iron actually helps out our red blood cells a lot,
which carry oxygen to the muscles.
And if you are deficient in iron,
which a lot of female endurance athletes are,
you're not going to be able to perform very well
because it's a very aerobic intensive
oxygen-utilizing activity.
So iron, often in the form of liver
or spirulina, is very bio-available.
I don't recommend taking iron, however, in a pill form.
Next is omega-3.
One of the biggest things that we battle as triathletes
is
inflammation.
It's very hard on our body.
Now, if our omega-3 to omega-6 balance
is off,
and typically it's easier
to go over
on omega-6,
we're going to end up becoming inflamed.
We're gonna be sore,
we're not gonna be able to function very well,
we're gonna retain a little bit of water.
Omega-3 helps balance that out,
reduce our inflammation, so that we can recover faster
and train more often.
Again, I don't recommend taking this necessarily from a pill
because omega-3s, fish oils, things like that,
have been shown to have really high levels of rancidity.
So they go bad.
They will wreak havoc on your stomach.
So two of the best sources of this are
krill oil
and
salmon roe.
And finally, bone broth
or collagen proteins.
Now, this is used for
improving the connective tissues
in all of our joints.
And we beat up our bodies a ton.
It really helps improve our gut health,
which is basically just beat up with us spending
so much time as triathletes
with blood in our extremities,
not in our stomach,
while we still put a bunch of gels and things
down there, and slosh all around.
So we need to repair our gut a little bit.
And we need to repair the pounding
that happens on our joints.
And studies have shown that bone broth
and collagen proteins go directly to joints
to help keep them healthy.
Now let's get into the "it depends" category.
Number one is creatine.
Creatine is one of the few supplements
that has been proven time and time again
to enhance performance.
There is no doubt about that.
Why wouldn't triathletes always take it then?
Well, because it actually shows that
on an endurance standpoint, anything longer
than about two or three minutes,
the benefit tends to be a little bit more muted.
What was talked about in one of our podcasts
on the Triathlon Taren Podcast,
which is the most highly-rated triathlon podcast
in the world,
Scott Forbes talked about
how triathletes could cycle
in and out of using creatine.
Using creatine during the off-season,
the base building season,
the strength and speed building season,
when they really need to hit intense efforts.
And then cycle off of it in the race season,
so that you lose all that extra weight
and you actually get, you know,
it's like taking ankle and wrist weights off.
You actually get the improved benefit
from being able to go more intense,
while your training is intense,
and you get the benefit from building that strength
at a higher weight and racing at a lower weight.
Next is amino acids.
Now, amino acids put into your
drink and your bottle
while you are exercising.
This depends on if you feel that it's a benefit.
Might be due to placebo effect,
but a lot of people find that amino acids
help keep them fresh. (finger snaps)
While studies have shown that amino acids actually delay
the release of serotonin in the brain.
So you actually feel less sleepy
towards the end of a long workout.
Try it for yourself, though.
It's not necessarily one of those things
that is a 100% proven to be
great for you.
Next is beet root juice.
Now a lot of people use beet root juice,
and the nitrates in this open up the blood vessels,
allowing people to pump blood and oxygen
to their muscles more efficiently.
The "it depends" part of this is that
it's only around about a third of the population
that really get this benefit.
So if you get this benefit,
if you're one of those lucky 33%
that actually gets a benefit,
and you feel like you're just jazzed up
and can take on the world?
Pump yourself full of beet root juice.
Next, ketones and MCT oil or powder.
Ill put these two together
because they're kinda the common low-carb, keto,
adapted athlete sort of go-to.
They tend to work fairly well.
Like, they are proven to work well.
Thing is, they work best if you are
in that low-carb, ketogenic training state.
So there are times that you might want use it,
times that you really wouldn't consider using it
if you're not one of those athletes.
If you're a traditional high-carb kind of athlete,
you're not gonna get a ton more benefit from this
beyond what you're gonna get from your carbs.
And finally, a probiotic or a prebiotic.
In both of these cases, it really depends.
I think there are a bunch of years that probiotics
were prescribed to everyone, regardless of
what was going on in your gut.
What we're finding now, is that it really depends on
the state of your digestive tract.
Some people benefit from probiotics,
some people probiotics will actually make some
of their problems worse, so.
Dealing with a naturopath,
a homeopath,
actually getting a
full digestive
gut tract
system
test
taken care of that...
I'm stumbling a little bit because I've done it
and it involves collecting your poo.
Understanding of what is actually going on
throughout your entire digestive tract
is important before you just go pumping stuff in there.
Finally, a few of the overrated supplements out there.
I'm gonna shock you.
A multivitamin is probably one of them.
Just taking a multivitamin
without worrying
about how you're body is actually deficient,
or okay in certain vitamins, minerals, nutrients,
things like that, it actually can do you harm
because taking something that is from outside,
not through real food, it can throw off the levels
of what's going on and have downstream trickle effects
that could actually do more harm than good.
It's not just as simple as,
all right, if you are topped up on something,
you're just gonna pee it out,
if you're deficient on something,
you're gonna absorb it.
There are effects where if you poke this thing,
that thing comes out.
So you gotta be very careful with vitamins
and not just take them blindly.
Also, there is the fact of just making your pee
really expensive by pumping yourself
with a bunch of vitamins that are hard to absorb.
Next is L-carnitine, and this is something
that a lot
of people
talk about how it improves fat oxidation.
Does it improve fat oxidation?
Yes.
How long does it take to really improve fat oxidation
and see
a difference in your training?
About six to nine months of loading of this.
You're gonna spend a ton of time doing it.
And what's probably going to have more of an effect:
your training and your diet.
Finally the last thing is melatonin.
Now this is very, very common.
Doesn't really have a performance supplmenent
sort of stigma to it, or association with it.
But a lot of people take melatonin
because sleep is so important for us triathletes.
We have to be very careful of it.
The reason that it's overrated is,
A:
It isn't until you get
into older populations
that you really do see a true benefit to melatonin
and actually helping your sleep.
And B:
There are some very strong indications that melatonin,
while it might help your sleep temporarily,
it can hurt it long term if you're taking it consistently.
So if you do take it, like I might take it
just even if it's for the placebo effect,
maybe in the first day after travel.
But that's it.
So.
Six, seven times a year.
Not every day.
So there you go, Trainiacs.
I hope that this helps clear up some things, and
you know what, as I think about it,
everyone turns into a scientist
when you start talking about nutrition and supplements.
So.
Hmm.
Let's hear in the comments below.
What are the supplements that you take,
and what are the benefits that you find?
Everything is individual to everyone else
so I'm sure that there are going to be lots of supplements
that people have different experiences
and different knowledge of.
So I am actually, (claps)
I'm gonna use this
as an opportunity to learn.
Tell me in the description below
what you are taking, what you find that helps,
and if you aren't already subscribed,
hit the subscribe button below.
Later, Trainiacs.