Estimated read time: 4.2 minutes (about as long as reading every label at the supplement store and leaving more confused than you walked in 🤔)

Hey Performance Nerds! Jonah here. 🤓

"A lot of the hype out there? It's B.S."

That's not a Reddit comment. That's a WorldTour team nutritionist talking about the supplement industry.

A new review just landed in Nutrients (Antonio et al. 2024) asking a simple question: which supplements actually have strong evidence?

The answer? The same 5 the IOC endorsed back in 2018. Nothing new made the cut.

Here's what you'll learn today:

(Augie gets his pre-run caffeine from mailman-induced zoomies. No loading protocol needed.)

A few of you have replied recently asking if I coach runners individually. The short answer is: I'm working on it.

Most of my career was spent inside NFL facilities and pro team locker rooms. More recently, I've been working with elite runners using the same system. Training load, recovery, nutrition, strength, and race strategy treated as one connected framework, not five separate tabs.

I'm considering opening a small number of 1:1 coaching spots for serious runners who want that approach. Video calls, unlimited access to me, and a shared library of the papers, podcasts, and resources I use with all my athletes.

If you're interested, reply to this email and tell me what you're working toward. I'll respond with more details about what 1:1 coaching looks like.

I use Science in Sport because their products are built from published research, tested with elite athletes, and actually hold up in hard training blocks.

Same fuel I use. No guesswork. No influencer fluff.

The running power meter trusted by serious athletes — is now an official performance sponsor of Marathon Science, delivering real-time pacing precision so you can train smarter and race faster.

💡 See this week’s full Stryd training tip at the end of this newsletter.

This is your cheat sheet. Find your situation, follow the row.

Transparency note: The lead author (Antonio) is CEO of the ISSN, which receives supplement industry funding. The underlying RCTs are solid. I'm citing that evidence, not the review's framing.

Cheap. Effective. Well-studied.

Caffeine blocks the receptors that make you feel tired. It lowers perceived effort and extends time to fatigue.

The dose: 3-6 mg/kg body weight, 30-60 minutes before your race. For a 70 kg runner, that's roughly 210-420 mg, or 2-3 cups of coffee.

Hodgson et al. (2013) found coffee worked just as well as pure caffeine capsules. 4.3% improvement in a cycling time trial.

Coffee, gels, capsules, chews. The delivery method doesn't seem to matter much. Pick what works for your gut.

Guest et al. (2018) showed 4% faster time trial performance at 4 mg/kg. But slow caffeine metabolizers actually saw worse performance. Your genetics play a role.

Timing matters. Caffeine peaks about 60 minutes after you take it. A caffeine gel at mile 20 won't fully hit until after the finish line.

Test your dose in training. Go lower in extreme heat.

Most runners hear "creatine" and think bodybuilders.

Time to update that thinking.

Creatine recharges your muscles' short-burst energy system. But the bigger win for runners is what it does for your strength training and recovery.

Desai et al. (2024) ran a research review on creatine plus resistance training. Result: 1.14 kg more lean body mass and 0.88% less body fat compared to training alone.

Yamaguchi et al. (2024) found that just 3 g daily for 28 days reduced day-after soreness from exercise.

The water weight concern? Real but overblown.

I take 5 g daily. Have for years. It's one of the few supplements I never skip.

Some lighter athletes I've worked with reported the same: strength gains that more than offset any water weight.

3-5 g per day. No loading needed. If you strength train (you should), creatine makes that training more effective.

It also supports recovery between hard sessions and can sharpen focus during long efforts.

The 1-2 lb water gain won't slow your 10K. (Your pacing strategy might. But that's next week's problem.)

The supplement with the strongest evidence for recreational runners is the one elite teams skip.

Nitrates from beetroot juice widen your blood vessels and reduce the oxygen cost of exercise. Your body does the same work with less effort.

Larsen et al. (2007) showed efficiency jumped from 19.7% to 21.1% with nitrate supplementation. Bailey et al. (2009) found 6 days of beetroot juice increased time to exhaustion by roughly 16%.

For elite athletes with a VO2 max north of 70, the evidence is mixed. Their systems are already so efficient that nitrates don't move the needle much.

For recreational runners, the story is different. Less-trained athletes see a bigger reduction in oxygen cost.

300-500 mg nitrate, 2-3 hours before your run. Concentrated beetroot shots are the standard delivery.

Fair warning: they taste terrible. (Worth it.)

Endurance athletes need about 1.6-2.0 g/kg/day of protein. That's similar to strength athletes.

But most runners don't have a supplement problem. They have a breakfast problem.

I see this constantly with runners I work with: big gaps at breakfast and lunch. They eat enough total calories but stack all their protein at dinner.

The fix: Distribute 0.4-0.55 g/kg per meal across the day (Mazzulla et al. 2020). Three protein-rich meals before you reach for a tub of powder.

Post-run recovery shakes are legitimate during heavy training blocks when appetite disappears. Otherwise? Food wins.

Beta-alanine buffers acid in muscles during short, intense efforts lasting 1-4 minutes.

Sounds promising until you realize: marathons aren't 1-4 minute efforts.

For runs beyond about 25 minutes, the evidence is inconsistent.

My take: save your bandwidth for something more worth the bother.

Possible niche for track workouts or a 5K finishing kick. But for most distance runners? Skip it.

Sodium bicarbonate is legitimate. IOC-level evidence, same tier as the 5 above. I left it off the main table because the paper didn’t cover it.

Quick version: bicarb buffers acid during hard efforts. If your race involves hilly courses, surges above your second threshold, or a fast finish, it can help you tolerate those moments longer.

If your plan is steady cruising, it probably won't move the needle.

The catch is GI distress. Bicarb can wreck your stomach if you don't test the protocol first.

I wrote a full deep dive on dosing, timing, and who should skip it entirely: Why Baking Soda Could Help You Surge at Mile 20.

Ketones: About $10,000 for 3 weeks of Tour de France use, and some studies show no benefit or worsened performance. That money buys a lot of actual training.

Greens powders: One nutritionist called them "a crock of overmarketed shit." Honestly? Hard to argue.

Cherry juice and polyphenols: Half-percenter at best. Sleep well and eat real food first.

The principle: Sleep, diet, and training before supplement rabbit holes.

Bottom line: The pros who train 30 hours a week use 5 supplements. You probably need fewer.

Welcome to the prove you’re a nerd section. Each week, I ask a question about a common running science myth.

Answer correctly, and you’ll be entered into a weekly raffle to win a package of Jonah’s favorite supplements.

This one nailed a common runner blind spot, bone injuries rarely show up the week you “overdid it.” They show up later, right when you think you got away with it.

The correct answer?

C. 3–8 weeks later, bone remodeling creates a temporary “weaker window” while old bone is resorbed before new bone fully forms 🧱⏳ ✅

Bone adapts on a delay. After a spike in impact load, your body starts remodeling by breaking down (resorbing) micro-damaged bone first, then rebuilding it stronger. The problem is that resorption happens faster than formation, so there’s a real window where the structure is temporarily weaker even if you feel fine and fitness is improving.

That’s why stress reactions and fractures often pop up weeks after the “bad decision,” not the next morning.

Here’s how the votes shook out:

Bottom line?

If you just leveled up training, protect weeks 3–8 like they matter, because your bones are still paying off the credit card statement from that “big build” even if your legs feel great.

I ran the same 6-mile route twice last week. Tuesday was easy at 8:30 pace. Thursday I pushed tempo at 6:45.

Two days later, my calves and Achilles still felt Thursday. Tuesday? Gone by dinner. Heart rate was higher on Thursday, sure. But the forces my bones and tendons absorbed each stride were multiples higher. That's mechanical load, and your watch doesn't track it.

Stryd's Lower Body Stress Score does. LBSS scales with Impact Loading Rate, not heart rate, so faster efforts earn disproportionately more stress. My easy 6-miler scored about half the LBSS of that tempo, despite being longer.

Why it matters:

Next time you plan a big week, check your LBSS totals, not just mileage.

Try it on your next run