Evidence Based Sports Performance

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Evidence Based Sports Performance Current training protocols are destroying athlete’s bodies 😰 But we help athletes compete for the long game 💪 Evidence-based. No fluff.

For athletes built to last. At almost 50 years old, I have several years of experience in health and fitness. As a Physical Fitness and US Army Combatives instructor and as the owner of a health and fitness studio, I have spent many years helping people improve their health and physical performance. Through my own experience and struggle with managing my weight and trying to find the best way to stay strong and active as I get older, I've learned valuable lessons that I've built into Ultimate Ketogenic Fitness.

I was in my forties, I owned a CrossFit gym, and I spent two years injured.Between 2016 and 2018, I had minor tears in b...
10/22/2026

I was in my forties, I owned a CrossFit gym, and I spent two years injured.

Between 2016 and 2018, I had minor tears in both calves, pulled a hamstring three times, tore the meniscus in my left knee, had a groin pull that lasted six months, herniated discs in my neck, and tore the labrums in both shoulders.

I went from training 4 to 6 days a week to feeling like absolute trash after 2. The speed I was hitting overreaching and overtraining was frustrating and demoralizing.

It wasn't my age. It was what I was putting in my face. Six carb heavy meals a day, because that's what you did if you wanted enough in the tank to train hard.

In May 2018, at 45, I changed my diet. 90 days in, my recovery was better. After about 6 months, everything was different. The groin pull went first, then my knee, then my shoulders.

I never had the structural damage repaired, so there are still movements I avoid. But nothing chronic hurts anymore. I'm 54 and I train 4 to 6 days a week.

If you're a Masters athlete and you've been told your injuries are just your age catching up with you, look at your food first.

10/21/2026

If anybody tells you everybody needs to train 3 days a week, walk away. If they tell you everybody needs 5, walk away from that too.

Everybody's different. A firefighter with two kids working shifts and a Masters CrossFit athlete who sleeps 9 hours a night are not going to have the same answer. Anyone who gives you a number without asking about your life demands isn't coaching you.

What you're actually looking for is how much work you can do and still recover enough to do it again. That number is different for everyone.

It takes about 4 weeks to find it. Track what you're doing. If you're going backward, you might need more rest or you might need more intensity, and you won't know which until you change one and watch what happens.

Most people never test it. They take someone else's number and blame themselves when it doesn't work.

Did you work out your number, or did someone hand it to you?

4 reasons your power output is dropping.If your numbers in CrossFit or HYROX have been going backward, it's usually one ...
10/20/2026

4 reasons your power output is dropping.

If your numbers in CrossFit or HYROX have been going backward, it's usually one of these.

1. Your sleep is poor. Sleep is the highest recovery state your body has. You can't fill your tank and drive your car at the same time.

2. You aren't managing your stress load. Your body doesn't separate training stress from work, family and everything else going on. Your recovery has to cover all of it.

3. You're training too much. The workout is the stimulus. The improvement happens while you recover. Anything past what your body needs to adapt is just more to recover from.

4. Your body can't access its own fuel. You have plenty of stored energy. Your body just hasn't been trained to get to it, because more carbs are always coming in.

When power drops, most athletes respond by training harder. Look at your sleep, your stress and your food first.

Which of these four is your problem right now?

10/19/2026

If you need 10 minutes of stretching and rolling out before your body works in the morning, that isn't your age.

A lot of Masters athletes in CrossFit and HYROX live like this. They wake up stiff, they warm up just to get through the day, and everyone tells them that's what getting older feels like.

Inflammation is your body's response to something harmful. It's how your body tries to fix damage. If you wake up stiff every day, your body is responding to something every day.

For a lot of athletes, that something is their food. A diet built around carbs keeps your body in a chronic inflammatory state. Blood sugar going up and down all day adds to it, because your body has to respond to every swing.

If your body is busy dealing with that all day, it has less left over to recover from your training.

Change what you're eating and pay attention to how your mornings feel.

Eat whole food, animal-based, low carb, with adequate fat and protein. This will give you low inflammatory, highly nutritious options that will support your metabolism.

How long does it take you to feel normal in the morning?

10/16/2026

I was wrong about carbs, and here's how.

For years I told CrossFit and HYROX athletes that carbs are more inflammatory than fat because they create more reactive oxygen species. Someone commented on one of my videos and told me I had it backward. Carbs create less ROS than fat does.

He was right. I went back through the research and carbs do produce less.

My mistake was treating reactive oxygen species and inflammation as the same thing. They're connected, but they're not the same.

Where the oxidation happens matters more than how much gets made. Glucose is broken down in parts of the cell that aren't well equipped to deal with ROS. Fat is oxidized inside the mitochondria, which has the enzymes and antioxidant support to handle it.

So fat creates more ROS, but your body handles it better and overall inflammation is lower. Carbs also bring glycation and blood sugar swings, which drive inflammation on their own.

My explanation was wrong. My conclusion hasn't changed. Low carb athletes still have lower inflammation, and I still see it in the athletes I work with.

When someone explains a mechanism to you, ask whether it's the whole story.

Your nutrition is hurting your recovery. Here are 3 things I get the athletes I coach to stop doing.If you're a CrossFit...
10/15/2026

Your nutrition is hurting your recovery. Here are 3 things I get the athletes I coach to stop doing.

If you're a CrossFit or HYROX athlete who can't seem to recover between sessions, start here.

1. Eating before every session because you think you have to. If your nutrition is on point, you shouldn't need to eat before a workout. If you can't train without eating first, your body hasn't learned how to access the energy you're already carrying.

2. Eating every couple of hours all day. When I owned my gym I was eating six carb heavy meals a day, because that's what you did if you wanted enough in the tank to train hard. Your gut never gets a break, your blood sugar never settles, and your body never has to use its own stores.

3. Cutting your food back on rest days. Your body is still repairing for days after a hard session, including the days you don't train. Eating less on those days takes away what it needs to recover.

Eat whole food, animal-based, low carb, with adequate fat and protein. This will give you low inflammatory, highly nutritious options that will support your metabolism.

Which one of these are you still doing?

10/14/2026

The stimulus has to be enough to improve you. The rest has to be enough to let that improvement happen.

Nearly every problem a first responder or tactical athlete brings me comes down to one of those two being off.

If you're not progressing and you never really feel your sessions, your stimulus is too small. Go heavier, go harder, or add a set.

If you're not progressing and you feel wrecked all the time, your training isn't the problem. You're not recovering from it.

Most athletes only ever change their training. When things go backward, they add more volume or more intensity, and it gets worse.

You need to be willing to adjust both. Change one thing, track how you respond for about 4 weeks, and you'll find out which one was off.

When you last stalled, did you change your training or your recovery?

He tried keto, it went badly, and he quit. Then he went back and did it properly.Dave MacLeod is a Scottish professional...
10/13/2026

He tried keto, it went badly, and he quit. Then he went back and did it properly.

Dave MacLeod is a Scottish professional climber with first ascents at E11 trad, 9a sport and 8C boulder. He also holds a master's in human nutrition, so he reads the research himself.

For 20 years he ate a conventional high carbohydrate athlete's diet. Over time the weight crept up and his energy swung through the day.

His first attempt at going low carb failed. He hadn't adapted properly and he hadn't managed his electrolytes, so he felt terrible and stopped.

That's where most athletes finish the story. They tried it, it was awful, and now they know.

He went back and committed to it properly. He's since kept climbing at elite grades on a low carb, largely carnivore diet, into his forties. Fewer energy dips, stable hunger, lower body fat.

His own estimate is that it takes about a month to get your normal training capacity back and several months to reach your best. He's also blunt that athletes who are used to restricting need to eat enough fat and enough calories, or it won't work.

He doesn't pretend the carbohydrate research doesn't exist either. His argument is narrower than that: those studies rarely account for an athlete who is already fat adapted.

10/12/2026

Nobody looks at 400g of carbs and 60g of fat in a day and calls it an extreme diet. For a lot of CrossFit and HYROX athletes, that's just normal sports nutrition.

Flip it around. Eat 50 to 100g of carbs with more fat, and suddenly you're being restrictive.

That difference in how we see it is worth questioning.

Being ketogenic doesn't mean you never eat carbs. It means your body relies more on fat and makes more of its own fuel. Your glycogen is still there and your blood sugar is still maintained. Carbs just stop being the thing your whole diet is built around.

The real question isn't whether carbs are good or bad. It's how much a specific athlete actually needs.

When carbs aren't taking up 300 to 400g of your day, there's room for the food that helps you recover. Essential fatty acids, fat soluble nutrients, and highly bioavailable protein from whole food.

Food is how you recover. It isn't just fuel for the next session.

What would change if you built your diet around recovery instead of fueling?

10/09/2026

I don't care about the mechanism. I care what happens to the athlete.

Someone can explain to you exactly why a gel should work during a HYROX race. The pathway, the transporter, the uptake rate. All of it technically correct, but useless on the floor.

Then you get to the sled, and you're cooked anyway.

If I put someone on this and we talk again in three months, here's my whole list. Can they run harder and longer? Are they recovering better? Are they getting hurt less?

That's it. The mechanisms don't mean a squat to me if the answer to those three is no.

We've built an entire field on explaining why things should work instead of checking whether they did. And the athletes standing in the gym are the ones paying for the difference.

What actually changed for you in the last three months?

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