Dear Performance Nutrition Leaders,
This week: why Wolves pre-plan player nutrition on international duty, CrampFix's quiet spread through elite sport, and the latest jobs.
🧠 ON THE GROUND
Matthew North, Head of Performance Nutrition at Wolves, posted recently about supporting players on international duty.
His approach: pre-planning nutritional intake for key players using Hexis, paired with planned training and match schedules.
His words: "Far too often players are just reactive with their intakes but can we get ahead and help plan them."
This distinction matters more than most practitioners realise.
Dr. David Dunne, CEO of Hexis, breaks athlete engagement with nutrition platforms into three separate behaviours:
Planning — the athlete inputs their training data — power, intensity, session type — and generates a personalised fuelling plan. A deliberate action taken before the day begins.
Checking — glancing at the plan at the right moment. Before breakfast, a quick look. Green meal? Porridge. Red meal? Omelette. No logging required.
Tracking — full food logging. Recording what was actually eaten. Useful for data capture, calibration, and identifying patterns during focused blocks.
The mistake practitioners make is assuming success means tracking.
"It's not just about getting people to tell you what they did. It's about capturing attention at the right times to influence decisions."
If an athlete makes a better decision at most meals most of the time — that's a win. They don't need to log every meal every day.
North's post is a live example. He's not asking players to track everything. He's helping them plan — getting ahead of the reactive cycle.
The tools that get adopted aren't asking for more from athletes — they're asking for less, at the right times.
📈NEWS
Manchester City FC Hiring PDP Performance Nutritionist
Ted Munson appointed head of nutrition at Tottenham Hotspur.
East Carolina University Hiring Sports Nutrition Operations Assistant
UKSI & Aquatics GB Research Highlights Sustainability in Performance Nutrition
Ellie Brownrigg Appointed Academy Performance Nutritionist at Sunderland AFC
Boston Red Sox Recruiting Seasonal Nutrition Assistant for Minor League Affiliates
Valentina Segreto Named Head of Sports Nutrition at Genoa Cricket and Football Club
Research Support Officer in Hydration and Health Role Announced (2-Year Fixed Term)
New Research Published: Environmental Impact of Food Provision in Elite Football Teams
Stanford University Opens Role: Assistant Director of Sports Nutrition & Medical Nutrition Therapy
💡PERFORMANCE TECH
Founders will tell you their product is gaining traction. We're here to show you when it's true.
We first spotted CrampFix at Portsmouth FC — sachets sitting alongside Nutrition X carb shots and caffeine gum. Distribution through practitioner conviction, not marketing spend.
The evidence is largely anecdotal, but sometimes practice runs ahead of publishing.
Wallabies, Springboks, British Cycling, Leinster, Harlequins, Sale Sharks, Edinburgh Rugby, Melbourne Storm, Sydney Swans, NZ Cricket, England Cricket, Pakistan Cricket, Sri Lanka Cricket. Informed Sport accredited across the range.
That's a network effect you can't buy.
What are practitioners actually saying? From the Performance Nutrition Network — two performance nutritionists, both with 10+ years in elite sport:
"We currently use CrampFix with some great feedback. Although it's almost impossible for half of our squad to swallow."
"Cramp is multifactorial. As far as I understand, there's no mechanistic benefit of swallowing over mouth rinsing — the tastebuds activating the CNS is the main thing. But I'll still try get some in and get feedback."
The category is heating up. PickleUp — the pineapple-flavoured pickle juice shot we covered recently — just achieved Informed Sport certification. Palatability is the battleground.
