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🇳🇬 Nigeria /Sports

Why elite athletes use supplements, Report

From The Punch · () English

Translated from English, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

In-depth Named sources Context piece
  • Elite athletes increasingly use supplements like creatine for performance gains, but experts emphasize foundational health practices first.
  • Creatine, found naturally in the body and certain foods, provides rapid energy for high-intensity activities.
  • While up to 90% of athletes may use supplements, experts stress that diet, training, sleep, and recovery are paramount.

Elite athletes are increasingly turning to supplements, such as creatine, to achieve marginal performance advantages, but sports nutrition experts caution that these should only be considered after establishing a solid foundation of healthy lifestyle practices. Creatine, a compound naturally produced by the body and found in meat and fish, is particularly beneficial for fueling short, high-intensity activities like sprinting.

You would need the best part of a kilogram of raw chicken a day to get the amount of creatine you need.

— Prof. Graeme CloseIllustrating the difficulty of obtaining sufficient creatine through diet alone.

Professor Graeme Close, a nutrition expert, notes that obtaining sufficient creatine through diet alone can be challenging, requiring large amounts of food like raw chicken daily, which carries health risks. The use of creatine in elite sports gained significant traction in the 1990s, with reports suggesting British athletes experimented with it during the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. By the 1996 Olympics, an estimated 80% of athletes were reportedly using creatine, making it one of the most common supplements in sports nutrition.

Supplements are the ‘final piece of the jigsaw’ rather than a starting point.

— Prof. Graeme CloseEmphasizing the priority of foundational health practices over supplements.

Close, who has overseen nutrition for major sports teams, emphasizes that supplements are the "final piece of the jigsaw" and not a starting point. Athletes who prioritize fundamentals like a balanced diet, proper training, adequate sleep, effective recovery, and hydration are more likely to see significant results than those who focus excessively on supplements. He humorously suggests that the reported figure of 90% of athletes using supplements might even be an underestimate, with some sports teams seeing nearly 100% usage.

They’ve really nailed the 99 per-centers.

— Prof. Graeme CloseReferring to athletes who optimize their overall diet before seeking minor performance gains.

Australian cyclist Nicole Frain echoes this sentiment, stating that supplements are meant to "supplement the things you already do right." She stresses that athletes should not rely on supplements to fix underlying issues, reinforcing the importance of mastering the basics of diet, training, sleep, recovery, and hydration before considering supplementation.

I’m a pretty big believer that they are called sport supplements. They are there to supplement the things you already do right.

— Nicole FrainHighlighting the supportive role of supplements in an athlete's regimen.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by The Punch in English. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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