As an athlete, you have an engine that needs fueling. What happens to your performance when you underfuel?
Our Head Coach Ryan Kohler explains how low energy availability affects performance.
Video Transcript
Introduction
Ryan Kohler 00:00
Hey guys, it’s Ryan Kohler here head coach at Fast Talk Laboratories, with part one on a series on low energy availability and performance. This will be a multi-part series, where we’ll dive into some of the details of low energy availability, and its effects on performance.
So moving forward today, there are a few key points I’d like to keep in mind. So number one, we’re looking at this through the lens of performance management, not weight management. Number two, as an active individual, you have an engine, and that engine needs fuel. And number three, we focus on recovery as a way to support both performance and health.
So with that in mind, we’ll move forward with a favorite quote of mine related to recovery and performance. Mainly, this quote highlights the interconnectedness of everything that we do athletically. And in sort of a humorous way, we can easily link the nutrition components to the recovery and mental components and tie this into low energy availability in our experience as athletes. So moving on, this is a classic quote from the Barbarian Brothers, a little bit old school. It goes to say “There’s no such thing as overtraining, only under eating under sleeping and failure of will.” So I know there’s that overtraining word here, I’d like to go and reference one of the past episodes, number 127, if you want to look into overtraining a little bit more, check that one out for a deep dive on overreaching, overtraining and burnout, and how those are used in the research and in athletics. It’s a great episode with Dr. Seiler. For today’s purposes, though, we’ll stick with this quote as a way to just get things started. Not to get into a tangent on the topic, but this interaction of energy intake versus energy output via exercise, and those bodily needs can affect an athlete’s sensations and effectively determine where on this overreaching, overtraining burnout, scale an athlete might land within a training season. So the outline today will look at a couple different things. Number one, we will first just define what is low energy availability. Number two, what are the factors related to low energy availability? Number three, what other considerations should be taken into account when working with an athlete with low energy. And finally, we’ll look at two case studies that are really highlighting the athlete experience with chronic and acute low energy through the lens of both a student athlete and a Masters athlete.
What is Low Energy Availability?
So the first one is LEA, and you’ll see here the first time it’s referenced as LEA, you’ll see that abbreviation throughout to just stand for low energy availability. So starting off, the basic definition of this is that low energy availability is the inadequacy of energy to support the range of body functions involved in optimal health and performance. Take note of the optimal health section that comes before the performance word and that’s pretty important to me. I think that’s crucial because in many instances, the performance is really what we noticed declining. And we may disregard or miss some of those potential health declines. There are a whole host of health effects from LEA. Some of them just to name a few would include endocrine effects, bone, psychological, metabolic and immunologic effects as well. So those are some of the most common ones that I’ve seen with athletes in my years working with them. But there are a lot more and I’ll be sure to post some references for additional resources. So you can look at those in more detail.
How to measure LEA
Ryan Kohler 04:06
Alright, so starting off with just what is this? What does it look like? How do we measure it? There’s a way we’ll start here is looking at just the normative values for it. So on the right, we see a very basic chart showing energy availability, and there’s this highlighted section in the middle around this optimal level. And up top you can see it shows 36 kcals, or kilocalories per kilogram fat free mass, that’s FFM per day. So that’s a lot whenever I work with athletes on this, and I give them this number, you know, they’re used to seeing calories in the hundreds or the 1000s. But this requires us to look at things a little bit differently. And one of the key components is that middle part where it’s per kilogram of fat free mass per day, that’s really what changes that number from seeing it in the hundreds or 1000s, to now, in this example, say 36.
So the different components of this, like we said, first is the calorie. So the textbook definition of a kilocalorie is the energy to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water one degree. And for our purposes, it’s energy expenditure. It’s what does the body need to function, right? So this is just energy.
And then we take into account the next piece of the equation, and it’s per kilogram fat free mass. So what we do is normalize this to fat free mass in order to account for the metabolically active tissue. So there’s a lot of ways you can do this. Body composition measurements can be done a lot of different ways. Some are more accurate than others. And over the years, I’ve always tried to use the most accurate methods so that we can get as close in approximation as possible, since this has a big impact on the energy needs of the body. And then of course, per day, gives us the ability to look at it on just a daily basis.
So on the graph, on the right, you’ll see three levels, low, optimal and adequate. And for day to day function, and performance, remaining somewhere in that optimal range between 30 to 45 calories per kilogram fat free mass per day is ideal. Anything below that, and that’s where we start to see some of those performance declines and potentially some negative health effects.
What impacts LEA?
Eating Disorders
Ryan Kohler 06:30
So moving into some factors related to this, we have a number of them. So one is I have this DE/Ed. So disordered eating or eating disorders, right? And this is kind of progressing on a continuum from healthy eating habits all the way over to clinical eating disorders, weight fluctuations, or just concerns with body image, medical complications, and variable athletic performance can all stem from this. So this is one thing to consider.
Menstrual Dysfunction
Another one is Menstrual Dysfunction. So having some way to assess irregular menstruation, look at physical history, if there’s any signs associated with this have disordered eating or eating disorders. And of course, laboratory assessments of various blood markers can all roll into this one. So one thing I’ll say before moving on, any further is, you know, the Menstrual Dysfunction factor here has been around for a long time. And that’s really part of how this low energy availability grew is previously, we have the female athlete triad was considered really just a female athlete problem. We had bone density issues, we had Menstrual Dysfunction, but over the years, it was found that this doesn’t just affect female athletes, it affects all athletes, males included. So over time, this female athlete triad became part of a larger problem of relative energy deficiency in sport. So you’ll see that out there a lot. Now, it’s abbreviated red-s and now the factors that we see associated with the female athlete triad are now rolled into something bigger because this does affect any athlete.
Energy Intake
So moving on, one of these huge factors is energy intake. So there’s a lot of ways to look at this. So another factor is energy intake. And there are a lot of ways to assess this, most commonly, what I’ll do with people is have them record their usual habits using one of the many apps available, it seems like we all now have access to different tracking apps either on our phone or via the web. And it’s become pretty easy these days to log our nutrition habits. So that gives us a great starting point. And since we’re looking at total energy intake, we don’t need to be to concerned right away with, you know, specific micronutrients or macronutrients. But what I do initially on this first pass, is just try to get some indication of what’s your total energy intake. So we have some starting point that we can look at relative to expenditure. So then, the next piece is the exercise expenditure and of course, just like the intake, we have many ways that we can assess that. So GPS, heart rate monitors, metabolic tables, different estimations, nothing is perfectly accurate, but it’ll get us pretty close. Fat free mass is another factor. And there’s a number of ways we can account for that, we can look at dexa scans where we get a very accurate body composition estimate from x ray anthropometry. Different body composition methods, such as girth, and skin folds, which are pretty common.
Resting Metabolic Rate
Then finally, resting metabolic rate would be another one. So being able to measure this is a very important piece of it, because we want to know what’s that base amount of energy that the body needs. So I always tell athletes, that resting metabolic rate would be essentially, if you were to sit on the couch for 24 hours, how many calories does your body need to just function, and that’s about your resting metabolic rate. So one reason we look at this is that it does provide information on a suppressed metabolic rate secondary to that low energy availability. Many times when someone is suffering from LEA, we’ll see that their resting metabolic rate may actually decline because the body is not getting enough fuel. So it goes into this sort of storage mode, and seeing that decline in RMR or resting metabolic rate is one of those functions.
Internal Voice and Third Party Advice
Ryan Kohler 10:57
Moving on, this is going away from sort of the harder science or the more objective measurements to a little bit more of those subjective measurements. And I almost think that these at times are as valuable or more valuable than the measurements on the previous page. So one of them here is this internal voice or a third party, right? So I’m sure we’ve all had this, I know I’ve had this plenty of times before; we have that internal voice telling us something, you know, and it’s usually worth listening to. Same thing is if we have a third person a family member or a coach telling us something, it’s worth listening to. There’s a reason for that. One of the common ones is when I do work with athletes on their nutrition, I’ll tell them something, and they’ll say, “Oh, my brother was saying that,” or “Oh, my coach told me that.” And over the years, that’s become a really strong signal that I think is key to listen to.
Rate of Perceived Effort
So another one would be sensations or RPE, or rating of perceived effort. So quite simply, it’s just how do you feel, you know, every day that we wake up, we know, there’s some level of sensations that we have in us as athletes and our legs. We can look at our heart rate, things like that. But in general, we just wake up when we start the day, and we say, ‘I feel good today,’ or ‘I’m kind of tired.’ So things like: how do the legs feel? How does the body feel? And how really does that differ from your baseline, right? So having a good idea of what’s the baseline? What’s a really good day? And then what’s the day where I know I should be tired? And what does that feel like?
Appetite
So another one would be appetite, right? Reduced appetite can be indicative of a training overload, right? We need to take this in conjunction with other markers. But in general, with large training sessions, we can sometimes see a reduction in that appetite.
Mood
So mood state would be another one. This was measured in I believe that overtraining episode as well. But the PALMS or the profile of mood state, right? That’s a little bit more complex. It’s a great research based assessment. But even just in general, how do you feel? What’s your mood like? Having a good idea of your baseline, and how that changes day to day can give you some good indications on whether or not there’s a red flag to throw up.
Another one, as we get back into some more specific metrics, peak power is a great one in/for cycling. If we have a power meter, that’s pretty easy to measure. And this can be done across almost any sport, we can look at peak speeds, any kind of maximal effort, right? That’s one of the earliest signs is a reduction in our maximal capacities. So being able to monitor that frequently, can really help in addressing this low energy if it exists and we normally see that the top end does go before the lower zones. That’s going to show up in one of our examples here later. But that’s a great one to pay attention to.
Heart Rate Variability
Finally, heart rate variability or HRV. We know that HRV declines with heavy training loads when you get overcooked a little bit. So that’s a key one to watch. And now there’s really a lot of great ways to measure that. You know, from different trackers and even on our phones. So if you have a way to consistently measure something, it’s valuable, the key is just figuring out what’s meaningful to you, what can you consistently measure, and then understanding what those changes might be trying to tell you.
Low Energy Availability Case Studies
Ryan Kohler 14:46
So moving on to the case studies here. So looking at some real world application, we’ll move into two different athletes. So one is a student athlete and the other is an age group or a master Level athlete. So the student athlete, as a quick overview, was a female athlete with low iron underperformance and some forced time away from her sport due to extreme fatigue. The age group athlete is a little bit more interesting, in a way, it’s more of an acute occurrence, this misalignment of expenditure versus intake during a build phase. So it’s something that we all go through, we build, we recover, sometimes we do a little bit too much. And we pay for that. And, that’s just part of the training process. So for this athlete, this build phase, there were some other signals coming through that weren’t listened to. And we ended up seeing that there was some illness and a little bit of an extended recovery period here.
High School Distance Runner
Ryan Kohler 15:53
So in this scenario, we have our high school distance runner, who is experiencing underperformance and lab values revealed pretty low iron, as we see here with the low ferritin levels, few other metrics on this athlete, she was five foot four, 100 pounds, and estimated resting metabolic rate was about 1,320 calories per day. Energy intake, after we went through her usual habits, we found an average energy intake of about 1200 calories per day. So if we just take this into consideration, and we see that, you know, small framed athlete, low iron, low performance, even estimated RMR of 1,320 calories per day, and an average intake of 1,200, I think we see some pretty big red flags thrown up right off the bat. So the energy expenditure piece, this athlete was on reduced training at the time of assessment because of the underperformance in the low iron. So she already had some some forced recovery put in there. And during this time, she was on six hours per week, and this was her low volume phase. So her normal volume would be about double that. So pretty surprising when we think about the intake at this time on a low volume. And in talking with this athlete, we determined that the intake really doesn’t go up all that much during normal volume. So we can see pretty quickly how this will affect energy availability. So when we calculate this out, we came up with 13 calories per kilo of fat free mass per day. So extremely low, if you remember from that previous slide below 30 is really where we start to see some big red flags come up. And in particular, female athletes seem more prone to have more serious response to low energy availability than males even around and just below that 30 mark. Males, you know, fortunately, I guess can can exist in the Upper 20s, or right around that that cut off a little bit easier. Females unfortunately, don’t have that same luxury. So female athletes really do need to strive to remain in that adequate level or that optimal level. So seeing this 13 kcal’s per kilo fat free mass per day, we know pretty quickly what we need to do. And you know, when volume has already been reduced, we know it’s pretty critical to get this turned around. So we need to do this during the low volume phase, so we can change the habits before she gets back into her normal training routine.
Ryan Kohler 18:45
So looking at some of these changes, we took a few different approaches we utilized pre and post practice timeframes as opportunities to increase fueling. So one of the questions that went out to this athlete was, you know, what’s available to you and walk me through your timeline? And in addition to that, you know, what are your choices, what choices do you make already, because if we can take what she’s already doing, and just start to tune that up a little bit, that can be really helpful. Another one was that we self identified fueling opportunities within the day as part of this goal setting. So now stepping back from pre and post practice and looking at the day as a whole, you know, are there other opportunities, such as having a snack during class or between classes, or just being able to have better access during those free times to get more fuel in the body because again, this goes back to this athlete training, you know, six hours a week on low volume 12 or more hours a week during normal volume. That’s a sizable engine that needs fuel, and right now we just don’t have the fuel going in. Another thing we did is that we increase the serving sizes of many of her first choice fuels. So this was really identifying what is your go to fuel? Right? So when you need energy, then I asked this athlete, just give me your first choice of what’s available and what do you go to. So we first worked on increasing those before identifying others. And then lastly, we looked at, you know, we sort of termed this athletically minded fuels, both within and outside of your usual choices or habits. So this is where we got into a bit of a deeper discussion of, Okay, tell me what are carbohydrates to you? What are your go to carbohydrates, because we know that’s an energy source that you’ll need as an athlete. So that got us into a discussion of, you know, thinking about other options for carbohydrates coming in.
Ryan Kohler 20:46
So identifying these athletically minded fuels, allow us to get into a good discussion of, you know, what do you see as a good fuel? What is your choice, and for many student athletes in particular, I find that when we talk about energy, for example, or just high energy and that really gets us into the carbohydrate conversation, I find that a lot of athletes immediately think of, you know, the the grains, the cereals, breads, things like that, you know, the the, the expected of the carbohydrates that we think of, they typically don’t list out, you know, fruits or vegetables or have a lot of variety. So, I’ve seen this with, you know, mostly the high school athletes. And again, I think part of it is because they’re so busy, you know, part of it is that they’re so over scheduled, and they just need to find those those quick hit items, that you know, what’s easy it’s going to be it’s going to be grains and, and different types of sugars and things like that, which sure will fuel you. But this also gives us an opportunity to go and look at, okay, what other types of carbohydrates can provide energy, but also now start to give us some of those additional benefits of vitamins and minerals. So we many times start looking beyond the the cereals, the grains, etc, into meals, where we might start to incorporate different beans or legumes, and also figuring out how we can add more color to the day. So like I said, carbohydrate was a key component here to improve muscle glycogen storage with this athlete, we were able to assess that and as expected, we determined it was pretty low. So now here’s some of the numbers that we’ll get into and you can of course, calculate these for yourself, if you do record your intake and you look at a typical day, just take the total amount of carbohydrates, say 300 grams, and divide that through by your body weight in kilograms. So for this athlete, we found that she was consuming about three grams of carbohydrate per kilo of body weight, we nearly doubled that, right. And the whole reason was one, we wanted to start to get this athlete accustomed to just eating more adding more fuel to the body. And that takes time, that’s not something that would happen overnight. So during this low volume phase, we’re actually giving the athlete what is an appropriate amount of energy. But this, is going to feel like a lot. So it’s going to take weeks for the athlete to get used to this. And by that time, as as iron levels start to correct, and fatigue starts to go away. And this athlete is thinking about returning to normal volume. Now we can use this time to work on getting those new habits in place, it’s also going to give us the chance to maybe gain a little bit of weight at this time as well. So next protein, we focus on that right after a carbohydrate, and it was no particular order. But just these are the two main ones that I start with carbohydrate because we need to fuel the activity that we’re doing, and then protein as a way to manage the lean tissue that we have and help with that recovery process. So we increased protein from about 1.3 up to about 1.6 grams per kilogram. And you know, a lot of this was dependent upon, you know, her abilities to consume adequate protein during the day and just like carbohydrate, you know, finding ways to add protein and just determining well, how much can this person even eat what’s realistic during the day, that helps define this small increase as well. And then finally, we used fat intake to just balance the remaining energy intake. And like I said, the calorie load was starting to come up quite a bit. So we needed to take this slowly. So it was really a very stepped approach to get the athlete back to an ideal energy level and correct this low energy availability.
Masters Athlete
Ryan Kohler 24:50
So next, we’ve got our masters athlete, and with this one, I’m going to start off with a graph. There’s a lot of stuff going on here, but let’s just talk through what have initially so the blue bars, stage one you’ll see here and then the green bars, stage three, these are all related to power output over here on the left side. The green line down the bottom is HRR is recovery heart rate. So heart rate recovery, and then the orange line up top is just heart rate. So that’s you can see that over on the other axis here. So this was a protocol that this athlete has been doing for quite some time as a warm up. It’s a submaximal protocol to look at the heart rate and power response and essentially determine readiness for training and to indicate recovery. So these numbers across the bottom 1 2 3 4 5 are just different time points throughout the season, this entire timeframe is a couple months long. And I’ll give you just the overview these initial two bars were a build period that was about six weeks or so of a build period. And then we get into this middle bar. This is this was about two weeks. And then this after afterward, we had another I think this was another one or two weeks. And then finally, this was a few weeks after that. But the initial build here is really the the interesting piece, where it was just a longer a longer kind of base phase that we would see. So what we’re looking at this stage one power is really just showing very low end power. So like zone one type power, very conversational all day type of pace, right. So this athlete was monitoring the power output throughout these different phases. And we can say see that they stayed pretty consistent. This stage three, you’ll notice I skipped stage two, I was more concerned with stage three, because this one is the final stage of this submaximal test protocol. And this one really highlights more of what you can do at threshold and above. So think like 40 k Time Trial effort. And this is the power for this athlete that was associated with that. We can see here, there were some pretty big changes going on, you know, especially through the middle portion of this. So recovery heart rate at the end of the third stage is when recovery heart rate gets measured. And you can see some changes down here. So that’s going to be at the end of stage three. And then this heart rate here is just showing what the average was for stage three. So again, I’m not too concerned with the stage one heart rate. But this heart rate particularly is tied to the stage three. So that’s the one that will focus on here. And so this protocol is the title of his abbreviated LSCT. It’s the Lambert and Lambert submaximal cycle test LSCT. So it’s a very interesting protocol that, again, shows us, basically, if you’re recovered from previous training, and if you’re ready to take on additional training, so that’s what this data represents. For this athlete, you can see this is essentially the baseline in this first column, where we have a power output of 163 watts, and heart rate is 155 beats. So pretty typical for this athlete, then this athlete went through this build phase and essentially had a mismatch of intake and output. And this athlete, you know, had a couple challenges nutritionally and just wasn’t able to match the intake. So this is the one I’m calling a little bit more of an acute, low energy availability situation, because it happened really just over a few weeks. And it led to illness ultimately. So what we see in the second phase with the same protocol is now heart rate is down to 145. But look at power at 182. You know, if we just glance over this, we say, Oh, great, we’re doing more power. And look at that nice low heart rate. But the problem was, we also see that recovery heart rate is increasing. You know, we see a very slight decrease negligible at that light intensity. But like I said, the first thing to go is your top end. So now the way that we look at this is to say, Oh, well, it is taking a lot more power to make the heart rate come up. And ultimately for this athlete, the heart rate just wouldn’t go. So then the athlete did come down with a cold. So we had the illness piece of it. And this third stage is kind of just toward the tail end of that where we see Yeah, there’s a little bit of fitness decline. And we’re just waiting to recover so we can come out of this and get back to normal training. So this was a great time, where we were able to correct nutrition, focus on recovery and try to bounce back. So finally then we retest again here and we can see we’re pretty close to normal. power was coming up a little bit over here. But we see that heart rate is still Yeah, it’s okay. Heart Rate recovery is back to where it was in the second phase. So there may still be a little bit more recovery that needs to take place. And granted, this is only one beat off. But we also want to look at perceived effort. So talking with this athlete, this is still part of the process of you know, those sensations. And okay, we start to see that the numbers are coming back together. But what are those sensations? Like? Do you feel like you’re coming back. And then finally, at the end of it, we see heart rate, basically, back to normal power now returns to, you know, more normal level, and that recovery heart rate returns to a more normal level as well. So this was kind of more of an acute phase, and really to highlight the, you know, the importance of matching your intake with your output.
Ryan Kohler 30:55
So for this athlete, we were able to also measure muscle glycogen. So we see over here, the left rec fam, or the left quad, and one of the quad muscles, and we have over here, the right rectus femoris, as well. So we’re just measuring glycogen in the quadriceps when we see very, very low, right for both left and right extraordinarily low. So that persisted. We see here, we do have a baseline from a while ago with this athlete, pretty high, very, very adequate. But then, of course, when we look at this current scenario, we can see very low on both sides, right? So this is where we immediately think, okay, is that just poor recovery, poor nutrition, some combination, maybe it was some training. So this athlete did show a pretty aggressive ramp and training load. And again, for this athlete, this was a lot considering the nutrition that was present at the time, which really wasn’t that much. So this is where we can take a nice picture of everything together and say, Okay, well, nutrition was sort of missing, training load was on the high end, you know, and this was sort of a training camp scenario for the athletes. So it was, it was a fun experience to kind of get things going and look forward to that increase in fitness. But while you experience a mismatch in your intake relative to your expenditure, this is one of those outcomes that we can see ultimately. And one of the downsides, you know, that trying to prevent is, you know, this fatigue that we accumulate, really, we want to try to, we really want to try to keep this fatigue from turning into a new normal for you. So this is why it’s important to monitor nutrition, monitor the metrics that are important for you, and watch the training load. And just again, use those sensations, use the mood state use all of those other metrics to sort of see where you’re at, you know, on that, on that, on that continuum, you know, I don’t think there’s ever yet a particularly perfect spot where we say, Oh, you officially need to recover, you know, because we look at all the interactions of the data. And it can be hard to pinpoint at times.
Ryan Kohler 33:13
Going over how we can correct this. So there’s a few big things that I’ve put together here. So basically, eat, sleep and monitor right. So quickly, just eating eat adequate fuel to support your activity needs. Sleep, we know adequate sleep will help the body to recover. And I also will lump you know any other sort of recovery practices, stress management, things like that all within this recovery or sleep topic, and then monitor right finding your preferred key metrics and keeping track of those that way. If you can find a baseline, then you can track changes. So like I said a little bit earlier. Many times I’ll find myself simply getting the athletes to focus on getting enough energy, we’ll eventually get to the point of managing specific macronutrients carbs, fat protein, but initially, when dealing with low energy availability, one of the biggest hurdles seems to be just simply increasing energy needs. So a few strategies that I use with my athletes and this will be will kind of build on what we went through with the student athlete, is, I’ll ask a few questions. So one would be give me a verbal walkthrough of your kitchen, including your fridge and pantry. What will I see in there? What’s front and center, you know, what’s ready to, to be taken there? Right? And what’s missing too, you know, and that really allows me to see what is their understanding of nutrition and fueling? So if they if it’s all you know, Sunny DS that are in front of them, and they just can grab, you know, a drink anytime, then we know Okay, well, they have carbohydrates, but there’s so many other options out there, you know, and then sometimes if I ask what’s missing, and I get the deer in the headlights look, then I know that’s a great opportunity for us to educate on here are the different types of carbohydrates. Here are the different types of fats, which ones are considered healthier than others, etc. So another question would be what are your main energy sources? And this is where we get into the carb discussion. So I’ll ask them to give me their top three fuels that are your go to high energy items. You know, and again, a question that I asked earlier I mentioned earlier, are they able to list all of the sources not just grains, for example? Another question would be what are your main recovery fuels? What’s your what’s your recovery meal look like? What’s a what’s a recovery snack look like for you. So that’s where we can start to get into seeing how athletes would would piece these things together? Are there foods that you avoid, so we can start to get some idea for likes and dislikes.
Ryan Kohler 35:48
And also self identifying the fuels, not foods, we’re gonna call them fuels that you feel are important to your athletic progress. So I’ll throw out this scenario of if I told you to get ready to compete, complete. If I told you to get ready to complete 100 century ride tomorrow, what comes to mind nutritionally? Where do you start looking to prepare the body for that effort? And do you have all the tools and knowledge available to you? So next, we look at sleep, I’ll ask them to walk me through their sleep habits. Do you monitor sleep? Of course, we have so many devices that can do that now. I just like to know how the athlete is using that data. And what other methods do you have for recovery? Can you catch up on naps, things like that during the week? So then on the metric side, you know, what metrics are you tracking, and personally for you what is important for your progress, you know, we can track just about anything now. But I want to know which metrics are important for this athlete, because I can give 10 or 15 different things to track. But if it’s not meaningful for the athlete, and if they’re not interested in it, then it’s not as useful. So we’ll review that. And then finally, we’ll just set goals based on that above information, we’ll determine a timeframe for that for reviewing that. And then try to set the athlete out with the tools necessary and then recheck down the road somewhere.
Ryan Kohler 37:14
So that’s the end of the first part. Coming up in part two, we’ll talk about preventing and correcting low energy through nutrition and physiological interventions. This is where we can start to look a little bit deeper at the nutrition pieces of it. And deeper into the physiology like looking at testing, a little bit more of the metrics, things like that, and help try to correct that. So if you find yourself in that scenario, then we’ll try to add a few more tools to the resources to help correct it. So if there’s questions on this, you can head over to our forum to post any questions and discuss this, we will check out the forums and get back to any relevant questions in part two of the screen-share series. And just a quick note, if you’re listening after October 27, head over to our forums to view the questions and continue the discussion because we’ve probably already picked up the questions for part two by that time. Thanks again for listening and looking forward to seeing you in part two of this screen-share series. I’m Ryan Kohler with Fast Talk Laboratories.
