This issue is powered by The Performance Nutrition Network
Dear Performance Nutrition Leaders,
This week: Gemma McGuinness on athlete support that survives real life, the latest news, and Näak’s savoury answer to the twentieth-hour fuelling problem
💡 EXPERT OPINION
Effective athlete support is more than technically correct nutrition advice.
In Sigma Nutrition episode 617, Gemma McGuinness and Danny Lennon discuss what effective support looks like once training, travel, injury and the rest of life begin interfering with the ideal routine.
McGuinness is a registered performance nutritionist, former professional footballer and co-founder of Verus Performance. Her “good, better, best” framework gives an athlete somewhere to go when the perfect option is unavailable. Best remains the target. Better preserves most of the intent. Good is the minimum routine that stops one disruption becoming a completely missed fuelling opportunity.
The planning discussion during the podcast is therefore less about producing a more detailed programme and more about building options the athlete can still execute. Flexibility is part of the standard, not a departure from it.
McGuinness separates process measures — preparing meals or fuelling before training — from outcomes further away from the intervention. That is a useful distinction for practitioners. A behaviour can improve before the performance outcome it is expected to influence becomes visible.
The wider aim is autonomy. Planning, cooking and adapting are performance skills, but they also remain useful during injury, the off-season and life after sport. Effective support should not make an athlete permanently dependent on the practitioner who designed it.
📈NEWS
Dr Alfie Gordon shares how to build animated presentation decks with AI
Harlequins is recruiting a Nutritionist for its Women’s Programme at Surrey Sports Park
Miami Marlins are hiring a Minor League Performance Dietitian in Jupiter, Florida — RD required
Saad Chatto shared a time-mapped match-day fuelling protocol
Clare Farrell, Liverpool’s Head of Performance Nutrition, shared a behind-the-scenes look at Liverpool FC
San Jose Sharks are hiring a part-time Nutrition Operations Manager role across NHL and AHL facilities
Hartpury University & Hartpury College is hiring a permanent, part-time Sports Nutritionist
Have an industry update you’d like to share? Drop us an email → [email protected]
💡PERFORMANCE TECH
The 2026 UTMB covers 174 kilometres and 9,700 metres of climbing. The maximum race time is 45 hours and 30 minutes. Even the fastest athletes can be moving for close to 20 hours.
At that point, fuelling is not only about carbohydrate targets. It is whether the athlete can face another sweet gel.
Näak’s Sweet Potato and Butternut Squash Ultra Energy Purée sits between sports nutrition and real food. Each savoury, semi-liquid pouch provides 200 calories, 26 grams of carbohydrate, five grams of protein and what Näak describes as 325 milligrams of electrolytes.
The carbohydrate comes from sweet potato, maple syrup and hydrolysed oat flour. Pea protein, rice and barley protein, canola oil and butternut squash move it away from the usual syrup-based gel.
That change in taste and texture matters. In one 100-kilometre case study, an athlete who expected to rely on sweet foods instead preferred savoury options during the race. It is only one athlete, but the experience will be familiar to anyone who has supported an ultra: the nutrition plan often fails because appetite changes before energy requirements do.
Its role is rotation.
For a two-hour race, variety may be optional. When there are another ten hours to Chamonix, it can be what keeps the athlete eating.
