Dear Performance Nutrition Leaders,
This week: low energy availability's hidden cost, the latest news, and a ready to drink creatine beverage.
💡 LATEST RESEARCH
A new brief report from Penn State adds an interesting dimension to the energy availability conversation — this time, sleep architecture is in the frame.
Lundstrom and colleagues studied 26 elite NCAA Division I collegiate swimmers during a two-week heavy training block. Sixty-nine percent fell below 45 kcal/kg FFM/day — the threshold commonly used to define optimal energy availability. For context, prior estimates in elite endurance athletes have ranged from 25 to 31%.
The standout finding was the relationship with sleep architecture. Energy availability was positively correlated with REM sleep duration across all swimmers (r = 0.64, p = 0.001), and remained a significant predictor of REM hours even after controlling for total sleep duration.
The study used MyFitnessPal food logs, WHOOP-derived exercise energy expenditure, and DXA-assessed body composition — a methodology worth noting when interpreting the findings.
The authors are appropriately cautious. The design is cross-sectional, and the relationship is plausibly bi-directional. Low EA may disrupt sleep, or poor sleep may drive the behaviours that lead to low EA.
This adds another dimension to the conversation around adequate fuelling — and another data point worth keeping in mind when athletes report poor sleep quality.
📈NEWS
IMG Academy hiring performance dietitian
Vegas Golden Knights recruiting Team Nutritionist
NC State Athletics seeking Director of Sports Nutrition
SMU Athletics hiring Director of Olympic Sports Nutrition
GSSI launches multi-year women's hydration and nutrition study
South Carolina Athletics recruiting Olympic Performance Dietitian
Creatine surpasses protein as fastest-growing supplement segment
Samantha Bernhardt appointed Assistant Football Dietitian at Liberty University
Arla Foods Ingredients launches GLP-1 companion nutrition at Vitafoods Europe
Sports energy gels labelled ultraprocessed — the endurance nutrition debate heats up
Katie O’Connor shares performance nutrition provision at University of Tennessee
Nicola Giuliani reflects on their first season as Lead Performance Nutritionist at Nottingham Wildcats
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💡Performance Tech
Creatine is in the middle of a market moment.
The science has been settled for years. What has not changed is the format: powder, scoop, mix, repeat.
KA-EX is testing whether that changes. The brand launched an RTD creatine beverage, positioning it specifically for high-performance athletes.
It is one of the more credible format plays in recent memory — not because creatine is novel, but because convenience format adoption has historically unlocked entirely new user cohorts.
Protein bars did not grow the protein market by converting powder users; they converted people who never used powder at all. The same logic applies here.
KA-EX’s creatine EAA+ booster is Informed Sport certified.
RTD creatine is a meaningful format development for endurance and team sport populations where powder compliance is a genuine friction point. Keep an eye on this one as the category evolves.
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