SiS’ launches personalised performance nutrition service for elite athletes
Experts from the new initiative called Performance Solutions, will work alongside several teams including the England Women's football teams, Team INEOS Cycling and British swimmer, Adam Peaty to produce personalised programmes aimed at improving performances.
The initiative also adds the Giro d'Italia, Tour de France and Vuelta a Espana to their portfolio.
Essentially, we are bringing a new model and methodology of how to deliver high performance nutrition in sports,” says James Morton, professor of exercise metabolism at Liverpool John Moore University and director of Performance Solutions.
“Our framework is a way of thinking which helps sports identify their key performance determinants, priorities and solutions, the result of which will help deliver winning outcomes.”
Morton, who has worked with Team Sky and Liverpool FC during the last ten years, says they will offer personalised performance solutions to solve a range of performance needs.
“By putting our nutritionists into the sports to deliver the best practice protocols underpinned by the latest research, we are bringing science and innovation plus the practical delivery,” he adds.
Identifying performance needs
SiS teams will initially identify performance needs followed by specific and targeted research overseen by nutritionists working closely with assigned clients.
The results will then form personalised solutions for the teams and individuals with the ultimate goal being to maximise performance.
Professor Morton believes this approach will transform the way sports nutrition is delivered and the way information is shared by embedding SiS expert nutritionists within the teams' performance staff.
He believes what Performance Solutions is offering will deliver big gains in some sports, adding that bringing academic rigour and world class practitioner skills to the front-line of elite sports will help athletes “get faster, stronger, fresher, smarter and above all contribute to winning.”
Most UK football clubs boast nutritionists on their payroll and their canteens have separate stations breaking the meal choices into different food groups making it easy for players to follow plans.
When current manager, Jürgen Klopp first moved to Liverpool FC, he upset Bayern Munich by poaching their nutritionist, Mona Nemmer.
One of her first moves was to ban tomato sauce because of its sugar content. The club also has a partnership with SiS and Klopp's background is in sports science – he fully expects his players to take responsibility for what they consume.
Christopher Rosimus, lead performance nutritionist for the Football Association is one of the participants excited to be working with Performance Solutions.
He said: “Having access to cutting-edge research at the university will help better profile the performance nutrition needs of our players.”
The Clear Health Program
As well as services like this, apps can play a big part in helping people take control of their nutrition and health but the true measure of an app's worth should be if it helps you make healthy changes.
While some are just calorie counters and food diaries, there are some very innovative approaches appearing on the market.
Peit Hein van Dam, a Dutch data entrepreneur, has co-founded The Clear Health Program, an ultra-interactive personalised health tracking service that gives consumers the personalised data they need to enable long-term lifestyle changes.
Here, several steps are taken over three weeks to gather personalised data, that go on to form a basis for data analysis services, a personalised diet, coaching, recipes, reminders, suggestions and an online community to interact with.
There may be hundreds of thousands of health-related apps available for Smartphones, but having nutritionists embedded within sports performance teams, delivering personalised plans based on ongoing research is a first.
SiS managing director, Ashley Read said: “Performance Solutions will generate fresh insight on sports nutrition to support future step-change innovation and more importantly help fuel our partners to succeed.”
