We took a stab at debunking one myth – dehydration and exercise and performance. Time to take a swing at another. Fat burning at high exercise intensity. To steal a phrase from our NZ colleagues, WTF? (what the fat)!? Our question: could fat burning be more important for high-intensity performance than previously thought? Background Physiologists have long known that fat fuels us at rest and even for low to moderate exercise intensities. Beyond this point however, we've bee

So The Prof and I are certainly all “conferenced-out”. Having been in Europe for just over week, it’s been not stop, with first the INSEP Heat Conference in Paris, and second the European Congress of Sports Science (ECSS) in Malmo Sweden. We’ve had an amazing time. Attended some good presentations, but most importantly gained the opportunity to meet some quality people and amazing minds from around the world of Sports Science. So what are my major reflections and learnings af

Effects of High-Fat and High-Carbohydrate Diets on Metabolism and Performance in Cycling. David S. Rowlands and Will G. Hopkins I alluded to coming across this study in our last post. Recently attending the Sport and Exercise New Zealand Conference in Queenstown, in my own backyard, I watched the main author of the study, Associate Professor David Rowlands, present the work he completed during his PhD in this area. David’s study is the focus of this post. Admittedly, I may h

… so I was fired up from my NSCA conference experience. In my mind, we had two opposing observations about hydration and how it affected physiology and performance. When we did hydration studies in laboratories and climate chambers, we seemed to get a very different response to what we were seeing in field conditions. Those lab-based observations were supporting the hydration industry, and the hydration industry was doing all it could to make sure the world knew about it. Per

We appreciate the comments and feedback received in response to our recent study. There were two main themes of feedback expressed that we’ll address in this post. Response Theme 1: “I’m surprised by the findings. Are they valid? Why the use of potentially invalid substrate oxidation equations?” We addressed this point in the discussion section of our paper, but it would be good to review. We state (p7-8): "We have estimated fat and carbohydrate oxidation based on in

... continuing on with the story of how I learned about hydration and its effects, or lack thereof, on performance... in my last post, I'd discovered that there could be a few untruths in the messaging we were receiving from scientific organisations and related industry. In July 2005, I happened to be conferencing in Las Vegas at the National Strength and Conditioning Conference shortly after my learning, and decided to attend a Gatorade-sponsored presentation by a fella name

The year is 2015. A year and a bit out from the Rio Olympics. We’ve been immersed in high performance life for 5-6 years now. And living the life we do, means we care, pretty passionately, about certain issues. We want to get it right. Doing so means we increase the chance of success for the athletes and coaches we work with. And in the pursuit of trying to get things right, one thing we’ve noticed over the years in our field, is how viewpoints/opinions can change. It