Technology advancements for nutrition in professional cyclist 🚴♂️🔍
New tech to influence fuelling in the peloton.
Nutritionally Relevant Technological Advancements in Professional Cycling
Study Details
This new review from the UCI Sports Nutrition Project outlined advancements in technology within pro cycling which have relevance for nutrition 📱
Here are the 7 key technologies, including their Pros (✅) and Cons (⚠️) ⬇️
Key Findings
Power meters ⚡
✅ Reasonable ability to estimate net exercise energy expenditure (EE)
✅ Useful practical metric for athletes and support staff
⚠️ Efficiency varies by context
⚠️ Additional measures needed to estimate total EE
Continuous glucose monitors 🩸
✅ Reasonable ability to estimate blood glucose concentrations
✅ Potential practical insights for sports nutrition
⚠️ Does not reflect muscle glycogen stores or glucose flux
⚠️ Time lag and weak links to performance remain problematic
Portable sweat & lactate analysers 💧
✅ Reasonable ability to assess sweat electrolytes and lactate concentrations
⚠️ Limited practical application currently
⚠️ Unclear direct performance benefits
Noninvasive muscle fiber typing 🧬
✅ Sufficient validity for estimating muscle fiber type
✅ Potential value for talent ID and training prescription
⚠️ Requires specialist MRI spectroscopy equipment
⚠️ Limited portability and high cost
Ultrasound for muscle glycogen & skinfolds 📡
✅ Potential ability to estimate muscle glycogen and skinfold thickness
✅ Skinfold validity may be sufficient for practical use
⚠️ Muscle glycogen validity remains highly questionable
Core body temperature sensors 🌡️
✅ Potentially useful for heat acclimation and performance monitoring
⚠️ More validation data needed before widespread practical use
Portable substrate metabolism devices 🔥
✅ Some devices can reasonably estimate carbohydrate and fat oxidation during moderate exercise
⚠️ Limited validity at very high and low ventilation rates
⚠️ Practical utility remains unclear compared with tissue-specific measures
Reference
https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/ijsnem/36/3/article-p369.xml
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