Sports nutrition centers
ESN stands for maximum performance with maximum taste. Our products undergo strict controls and contain only high-quality ingredients. The result: a top-class taste experience, unmatched in the high-performance segment spin oasis login. So that you can give your all every day for your sporting goals, without compromise. Learn more about our own Aroma Lab, the place where our unique ESN taste is created.
Adequate nutrition is the foundation of performance, and all athletes, regardless of their level, should have access to high-quality sports nutrition. Our team of coaches and nutritionists works closely with each client to create personalized meal plans and supplement guides designed to help them reach their full potential.
You can help people build sustainable nutrition and lifestyle habits that will significantly improve their physical and mental health—while you make a great living doing what you love. We’ll show you how.
Sports nutrition database
Increasing nitric oxide bioavailability may induce physiological effects that enhance endurance exercise performance. This review sought to evaluate the performance effects of consuming foods containing compou…
Many factors are known to influence food choices, including personal taste, affordability, cost, sustainability, culture, family, and religious beliefs (Figure 1) . In addition to these factors, individual knowledge of food and nutritional science also influences choices .
Nutrition is an essential component of sports and athletic training. The amount, ratio, and timing of fuel for athletes can be the difference of seconds and inches at game time. The Fuel to Rise™ proprietary database of sport and position-specific requirements gives coaches, athletic trainers, and dietitians the data needed to support the precise needs of each individual competitor.
da Silva et al. developed a skimmed, lactose-free, and leucine-fortified cow milk chocolate (CML) prototype. The developers proposed a lactose-free “ready-to-eat” product that was tested on a group of soccer players. The findings suggest that CML tasted good and was well tolerated by athletes in this study . This suggested that CML could be an alternative sports drink that would provide post-workout energy recovery while avoiding discomfort for athletes with lactose intolerance.
Currently, there is a hypothesis about the need for a carbohydrate-protein mixture (CHO:PRO) in the diet of sprint athletes . Some studies have shown that CHO:PRO in the diet increases muscle glycogen stores, decreases muscle damage, and improves exercise adaptation . The carbohydrate-protein blend improves the rapid recovery process by stimulating muscle protein synthesis, as well as activating both the target signaling mechanism of rapamycin and more efficient storage of glycogen through an insulinotropic response .
American-style football (ASF) athletes are at risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and exhibit elevated levels of serum neurofilament light (Nf-L), a biomarker of axonal injury that is associated with repetit…
International society for sports nutrition
To date, only a few studies involving nighttime protein ingestion have been carried out for longer than four weeks. Snijders et al. randomly assigned young men (average age of 22 years) to consume a protein-centric supplement (27.5 g of casein protein, 15 g of carbohydrate, and 0.1 g of fat) or a noncaloric placebo every night before sleep while also completing a 12-week progressive resistance exercise training program (3 times per week). The group receiving the protein-centric supplement each night before sleep had greater improvements in muscle mass and strength over the 12-week study. Of note, this study was non-nitrogen balanced and the protein group received approximately 1.9 g/kg/day of protein compared to 1.3 g/kg/day in the placebo group. More recently, in a study in which total protein intake was equal, Antonio et al. studied young healthy men and women that supplemented with casein protein (54 g) for 8 weeks either in the morning (any time before 12 pm) or the evening supplementation (90 min or less prior to sleep). They examined the effects on body composition and performance . All subjects maintained their usual exercise program. The authors reported no differences in body composition or performance between the morning and evening casein supplementation groups. However, it is worth noting that, although not statistically significant, the morning group added 0.4 kg of fat free mass while the evening protein group added 1.2 kg of fat free mass, even though the habitual diet of the trained subjects in this study consumed 1.7 to 1.9 g/kg/day of protein. Although this finding was not statistically significant, it supports data from Burk et al. indicating that casein-based protein consumed in the morning (10 am) and evening (10:30 pm) was more beneficial for increasing fat-free mass than consuming the protein supplement in the morning (10 am) and afternoon (~3:50 pm). It should be noted that the subjects in the Burk et al. study were resistance training. A retrospective epidemiological study by Buckner et al. using NHANES data (1999–2002) showed that participants consuming 20, 25, or 30 g of protein in the evening had greater leg lean mass compared to subjects consuming protein in the afternoon. Thus, it appears that protein consumption in the evening before sleep might be an underutilized time to take advantage of a protein feeding opportunity that can potentially improve body composition and performance.
At this point, whether any particular time of protein ingestion confers any unique advantage over other time points throughout a 24-h day to improve strength and hypertrophy has yet to be adequately investigated. To date, although a substantial amount of literature discusses this concept , a limited number of training studies have assessed whether immediate pre- and post-exercise protein consumption provides unique advantages compared to other time points . Each study differed in population, training program, environment and nutrition utilized, with each reporting a different result. What is becoming clear is that the subject population, nutrition habits, dosing protocols on both training and non-training days, energy and macronutrient intake, as well as the exercise bout or training program itself should be carefully considered alongside the results. In particular, the daily amount of protein intake seems to operate as a key consideration because the benefits of protein timing in relation to the peri-workout period seem to be lessened for people who are already ingesting appropriate amounts of protein (e.g. ≥1.6 g/kg/day). This observation can be seen when comparing the initial results of Cribb , Hoffman and most recently with Schoenfeld ; however, one must also consider that the participants in the Hoffman study may have been hypocaloric as they reported consuming approximately 30 kcal/kg in all groups across the entire study. A literature review by Aragon and Schoenfeld determined that while compelling evidence exists showing muscle is sensitized to protein ingestion following training, the increased sensitivity to protein ingestion might be greatest in the first five to six hours following exercise. Thus, the importance of timing may be largely dependent on when a pre-workout meal was consumed, the size and composition of that meal and the total daily protein in the diet. In this respect, a pre-exercise meal will provide amino acids during and after exercise and therefore it stands to reason there is less need for immediate post-exercise protein ingestion if a pre-exercise meal is consumed less than five hours before the anticipated completion of a workout. A meta-analysis by Schoenfeld et al. found that consuming protein within one-hour post resistance exercise had a small but significant effect on increasing muscle hypertrophy compared to delaying consumption by at least two hours. However, sub-analysis of these results revealed the effect all but disappeared after controlling for the total intake of protein, indicating that favorable effects were due to unequal protein intake between the experimental and control groups (∼1.7 g/kg versus 1.3 g/kg, respectively) as opposed to temporal aspects of feeding. The authors concluded that total protein intake was the strongest predictor of muscular hypertrophy and that protein timing likely influences hypertrophy to a lesser degree. However, the conclusions from this meta-analysis may be questioned because the majority of the studies analyzed were not protein timing studies but rather protein supplementation studies. In that respect, the meta-analysis provides evidence that protein supplementation (i.e., greater total daily protein intake) may indeed confer an anabolic effect. While a strong rationale remains to support the concept that the hours immediately before or after resistance exercise represents an opportune time to deliver key nutrients that will drive the accretion of fat-free mass and possibly other favorable adaptations, the majority of available literature suggests that other factors may indeed be operating to a similar degree that ultimately impact the observed adaptations. In this respect, a key variable that must be accounted for is the absolute need for energy and protein required to appropriately set the body up to accumulate fat-free mass.
The BCAAs (i.e., isoleucine, leucine, and valine) appear to exhibit individual and collective abilities to stimulate protein translation. However, the extent to which these changes are aligned with changes in MPS remains to be fully explored.
Skeletal muscle glycogen stores are a critical element to both prolonged and high-intensity exercise. In skeletal muscle, glycogen synthase activity is considered one of the key regulatory factors for glycogen synthesis. Research has demonstrated that the addition of protein in the form of milk and whey protein isolate (0.4 g/kg) to a moderate (0.8 g/kg), but not high (1.2 g/kg) carbohydrate-containing (dextrose-maltodextrin) beverage promotes increased rates of muscle glycogen replenishment following hard training . Further, the addition of protein facilitates repair and recovery of the exercised muscle . These effects are thought to be related to a greater insulin response following the exercise bout. Intriguingly, it has also been demonstrated that whey protein enhances glycogen synthesis in the liver and skeletal muscle more than casein in an insulin-independent fashion that appears to be due to its capacity to upregulate glycogen synthase activity . Therefore, the addition of milk protein to a post-workout meal may augment recovery, improve protein balance, and speed glycogen replenishment.
Comparison of the quality of whey and casein reveal that these two proteins routinely contain the highest leucine content of all other protein sources at 11% and 9.3%, respectively. While both are high in quality, the two differ in the rate at which they digest as well as the impact they have on protein metabolism . Whey protein is water soluble, mixes easily, and is rapidly digested . In contrast, casein is water insoluble, coagulates in the gut and is digested more slowly than whey protein . Casein also has intrinsic properties such as opioid peptides, which effectively slow gastric motility . Original research investigating the effects of digestion rate was conducted by Boirie, Dangin and colleagues . These researchers gave a 30 g bolus of whey protein and a 43 g bolus of casein protein to subjects on separate occasions and measured amino acid levels for several hours after ingestion. They reported that the whey protein condition displayed robust hyperaminoacidemia 100 min after administration. However, by 300 min, amino acid concentrations had returned to baseline. In contrast, the casein condition resulted in a slow increase in amino acid concentrations, which remained elevated above baseline after 300 min. Over the study duration, casein produced a greater whole body leucine balance than the whey protein condition, leading the researcher to suggest that prolonged, moderate hyperaminoacidemia is more effective at stimulating increases in whole body protein anabolism than a robust, short lasting hyperaminoacidemia.