News from ACSM: Tools to Enhance Performance
The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) is the nation’s largest group of exercise physiologists, sports nutritionists, and a multitude of other sports medicine professionals. Each year at ACSM’s Annual Meeting, members gather to share their knowledge and latest research. Here are highlights of presentations from the 2022 meeting in San Diego that might be of interest to runners intent on improving their performance.
Biomarkers That Impact Training and Performance: What do runners need to know?
Speaker: Shawn Arent, PhD, CSCS, FACSM, University of South Carolina
Biomarkers are substances in the body that are indicators of physiological processes. Endocrine biomarkers measure stress and adaptations to training. Biochemical biomarkers measure muscle damage and inflammation. Nutritional biomarkers measure the impact of diet, such as on blood glucose and iron levels.
Biomarkers are best used to document changes over time (as opposed to taking one measurement, such as serum ferritin, to see if the measurement simply falls within normal limits). Biomarker data can help assess changes in performance, recovery, and training optimization. Biomarkers might be able to predict and prevent illness. For example, in an 8-week basic training study, a third of the soldiers whose biomarkers classified them as being overreached experienced illness.
Biomarker research
• The military and some professional athletes and teams are very interested in measuring biomarkers. Connecting biomarkers to measurables like performance, training, sleep, and diet provides context and meaning to the measurements. By keeping athletes healthy and in the game, the likelihood of a winning season improves.
•With biomarker research, we now know that food deprivation can be more detrimental to performance than sleep deprivation. With Army ranger training, a 1,000 calorie per day deficit reduced testosterone and increased cortisol. Many markers can take a full month post-dietary restriction to get back to normal.
• Biomarkers can document the physiological impact of restrictive food intake and show how much better runners can recover when they are adequately fueled.
• Both physical and psychological stress impact biomarkers, as does travel through time zones. Seeing sleep data can help runners learn the value of prioritizing sleep.
Wave of the future?
Runners who are interested in getting their biomarkers measured should know this is an emerging field with many yet unanswered questions, including:
What is the best time to measure biomarkers? (Should recovery markers be measured right after exercise or a day later?)
How often should measurements be taken? (Might depend on who is paying the bill!)
Should athletes not exercise the day before blood draws/data collection?
Do biomarkers differ when measured under research conditions? (That is, does lab data compare to data collected at a real-life competitive event like a marathon?)
What is the minimal performance-enhancing level of a biomarker? Is higher better? When is a level too low?
Can biomarkers predict and prevent illness? And very importantly,
Will coaches (and athletes) be willing to alter their training schedules based on biomarkers? Coaches’ buy-in is essential, as is the runner’s willingness to alter training plans.
With time and well-established protocols for measuring biomarkers, this evolving field will have a significant impact on improving the health and performance of members of the military, professional athletes, as well as runners and curious consumers who can afford this luxury.
Sports nutritionist Nancy Clark MS RD CSSD has a private practice in the Boston area. She is author of the best-selling Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook (www.NancyClarkRD.com).