Sports nutrition: fishing for strength gains

As regular SPB readers will know, a large body of evidence has accumulated over the past 20 years or so demonstrating the benefits of strength training for athletes. It’s not just strength and power athletes who stand to gain from strength training, but endurance athletes too(^1-3). This is because strength training not only improves resilience and lowers injury risk in endurance athletes⁽⁴⁾, it also benefits muscle economy⁽⁵⁾. In plain English, this means that muscles become more efficient at converting chemical energy into motion, which in turn means that less energy and oxygen is required to sustain a given pace, resulting in less fatigue, especially in longer duration events.

Nutrition and strength

Much has been written about the importance of nutrition for maximizing the benefits of strength training – ie greater muscle mass and strength. In particular the role of post exercise protein intake (along with sufficient carbohydrate) is known to be extremely important^(6-8) – see these articles on protein nutrition for strength gains.

However, protein and carbohydrate aren’t the only nutrients required for optimum muscle growth and recovery. For example, the mineral zinc is known to play a vital role in protein (amino acid) metabolism; a shortfall can therefore impair protein metabolism resulting in lower muscle mass synthesis and muscle strength⁽⁹⁾. More recently however, evidence has begun to accumulate that certain essential fats, particularly the long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) – see figure 1 - play an important role in muscle protein synthesis and overall skeletal muscle health⁽¹⁰⁾.

Figure 1: What are EPA and DHA?