14 INSIDE FOOTBALL Thursday, March 20, 2014

INSIDE FEATURE Dr Jodi Richardson

SUPPLEMENTARY

The use of dietary supplements has given the AFL indigestion of late, but they play an integral role in helping footballers to perform at their peak.

W ithout question, supplement use was the hottest topic of 2013 and the matter continues to

create headlines. “Supplements” has almost become

a dirty word in footy circles, when in fact the evidence-based use of supplements has an important role in the preparation, recovery and hydration of any athlete.

We also need to look at them for exactly what they are – a supplement to an athlete’s performance nutrition. No supplement alone, or in combination, will ever make up for poor nutrition.

It was back in 1980 when Collingwood at the top of the ladder and St Kilda at the bottom of the ladder were the first clubs to invest in professional sports nutrition advice.

Professor Louise Burke, head of AIS Sports Nutrition, recalls that the pre-event meal was the major issue at that time.

“Many players felt that eating the

right foods in the right amount at the right time before the game (with their lucky knife and fork) would overcome a week of poor eating and turn them into champions,” Burke wrote in an article on the Ausport.gov.au website (“Sports Nutrition and Australian Football”).

“Recovery had not been invented yet and post-game activities mostly revolved around alcohol and partying.

“At the end of each season, players disappeared for a prolonged period and returned many kilograms overweight. The major reason to see the club dietitian was for weight loss advice. Although counseling sessions might have been taking place in one part of the clubrooms, however, players might have been enjoying a

‘sausage sizzle’ and accompanying beers in the other corner.”

Fast forward to 2014 and it’s a very different picture.

Kylie Andrew, nutrition coordinator at the Victorian Institute of Sport and Richmond Football Club’s dietitian, explained the integral role of the dietitian and the areas of players’ performance where nutrition has the most impact.

“We do a ‘food first’ program and it’s really about the dietary practices required to help them to achieve their goals, whether that’s muscle gain, body fat loss, improved onfield performance, reduced fatigue and better recovery,” Andrew said.

“I work with the players in one-on-one consultations providing individualised assessment plus we do a lot of team activities as well.

“We run a very comprehensive program with our first-year players so we teach them theoretical knowledge such as how much carbohydrate they need for recovery and what that is in food terms.

“We also teach practical skills as well, like label reading at the supermarket, and teach them to cook.”

When an AFL team travels interstate there is a lot to organise to ensure that players have the right food choices available.

For their last game against the Gold Coast, a late flight home for Richmond couldn’t be arranged so the team

stayed the nights before and after the game. Catering must be arranged at the hotel, football ground and airport.

“I provide the guidelines of what I want the players to eat and we have a great team of people within the club who help make that happen,” Andrew said. While food should always come first when it comes to nutrition, supplements have an important role to play to enhance an athlete’s diet. Protein powder is one supplement widely used in football.

“Sometimes players can’t eat the volume of food required and it needs to be provided in very compact form, but the other thing is that the protein they have is for convenience as well,” Andrew said.

“We encourage them to eat their total calories but we also want adequate protein, and it works really well distributed across the day. We also know that protein after strength training is important for recovery and to make a protein shake is really convenient.”

Richmond uses Musashi protein supplements, typically a whey protein isolate (WPI) sometimes with added carbohydrate.

Protein shakes are ready for players after training. Andrew’s role is to provide information in the form of a spreadsheet so that the trainers and the property staff can prepare the 40 or so protein shakes in advance of training finishing. It’s a lot of work

several times each week. In light of what happened last year

with the Bombers’ use of supplements, the AFL has also appointed a treatment advisory committee. Headed by Dr Peter Harcourt with representatives from sports science, club doctors, club dietitians (including Kylie Andrew) and the AFL Players Association, the committee’s role is to help the AFL put together new policy and procedures around supplement use.

“We now have lists of supplements; there is a prohibited list and controlled lists which include supplements as well as other treatments,” Andrew said.

“Controlled supplements and

QUESTIONS

Louise Burke: Times have changed.

1980s style nutrition: Tony Lockett downs a post-game ale.

Can’t beat it: Beetroot juice.

INSIDE FOOTBALL Thursday, March 20, 2014 15

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treatments can’t be used freely. If I would like to use a protein powder at the club then I have to make sure I can justify it and have approval for that controlled treatment and get it signed off by the club doctor.

“The idea is that it makes everyone more accountable for what we are using and why and gives the final sign-off to the club doctors so they know exactly what’s happening in the club.

“If I wanted to put a player on a vitamin D supplement, I would need to provide blood test results to show that the player is low in vitamin D and hence this is going to be our treatment.”

The AFL is also testing an app with a group of players, who record details of what products they are taking. This information goes to the club doctor and dietitian, as well as going back to the AFL.”

Depending on their individual needs, Richmond players use a range of other supplements including creatine monohydrate, beetroot juice shots, vitamins such as iron and vitamin D, caffeine, Gatorade sports drinks and carbohydrate supplements such as gels and even lollies such as jelly snakes during breaks in games.

“Beetroot juice contains nitrate and it is a very acquired taste, some players just can’t drink it,” Andrew said.

“The players that use it have it a couple of hours before a training session or a game and it’s about enhancing oxygen economy. There’s also a cumulative benefit from having it every day.”

Of course players don’t have to take any supplements, and when taking anything they are making an informed choice. The only players restricted from supplements altogether

at Richmond are first-year players to ensure that they get their sleep, schedule, diet and hydration right without relying on any quick fixes like caffeine for an energy boost. The combination of food first nutrition and supplements are fundamental to the work players are doing on the track and in the gym. One of the key things Andrew emphasises about the use of supplements is that none of them work on their own, they work to enhance the quality of training players are doing. Particularly during pre-season, part of a club’s training and supplement regime assists players to optimise their body composition for competition. Players are typically looking to either reduce body fat, increase their lean muscle mass or both. Diet and supplements are integral to achieving these outcomes.

Andrew Garlick, exercise scientist and director of Bodyology Physical Performance Solutions, explains that AFL players are “well rounded with respect to the need for strength, power, endurance and agility, and are probably one of the hardest athletes to train and achieve all of those things.”

“In the last 5-10 years the running and endurance have come even more into play as major aspects of the game,” Garlick said.

“The physiques of the amateur and professional AFL players I see is very lean, almost stringy – they are very athletic.”

“With the 17 to 20-year-olds I see coming in at the moment, there seems to be a culture of ‘if they’re tall, have got skills and they’ve got a big engine, we can put muscle mass on them’.

“A lot of these players are probably being picked up with the foresight that they need 10-15kg of muscle mass on

them within two to three years. “They don’t necessarily need to be

picked up as big mature men at 18 years old; I think that strength and conditioning and dietetics have a lot more confidence now that they can

build the man out of the boy as long as they have the baseline of being a good AFL player.”

Garlick emphasises that body composition requirements need to be tailored to individual players depending on their position, their speed, agility and overall wellbeing.

“Body composition has to correlate to performance. We find some guys come in at 6-7 per cent body fat, they’re getting sick and run down, and basically aren’t coping that well with the training load”, Garlick said.

“What might ensue after that is that they lose lean muscle mass. It could be that for a young guy who is stepping up to the AFL for the first time, the training is three times as hard as he’s ever done, and he just can’t eat the volume of food needed and get enough rest to recover and keep moving forward, hence the potential need to use supplements to drink the calories.”

Player progress with respect to body composition is regularly monitored using their body weight on scales as well as skinfold tests. A type of body fat pinch test, if you like, conducted by trained professionals who measure skinfold thickness in the same place on each player each time.

The general expectation at AFL clubs is that the sum of the skinfolds at seven sites on the body comes in under a total of 55mm.

“The biggest thing we focus on is change,” Garlick explained. “Clubs might do skinfolds every three to four weeks and more in depth testing every eight to 10 weeks.”

The advantage of in-depth testing is the accuracy.

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fat levels and lean muscle mass. The testing procedure is simple.

The player enters the pod, which is akin to a cocoon. The player sits comfortably in the Bod Pod for two to three repeats of 45 seconds. In the same way that the water level rises as water is displaced when you hop into a bath, the Bod Pod measures the displacement of air by the person taking up some of the air space within the pod. This displacement is measured as an increase in air pressure. Using specially developed software, the density of a person can be calculated, and ultimately their muscle mass and fat mass can be determined to within 1 per cent accuracy.

“If we can determine your body density, we can calculate what makes you up and how that’s shaping over time,” Garlick explained.

“Primarily, body composition testing is about gauging the effect of a training and nutrition plan, and seeing whether or not the player is moving in the direction the club wants them to.

“Gauging recovery is also important. Body composition can have a negative connotation around body fat but if you’re trying to maintain conditioning throughout the season, and the player is losing lean muscle mass in the first seven to eight rounds, you’d want to do something about that and put them on a new strategy for recovery to make sure that player actually copes better.

“If they’re not recovering and are losing lean muscle mass, it’s one of the first signs that something isn’t going right in terms of the balance and that their plan needs to change.”

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‘Sometimes players can’t eat the volume of food required.’