Dear Coaches,
Here’s what’s coming up today:
Expert Opinion
Food Insecurity Among Student Athletes
Connor Spencer dropped a reality check at The Trilogy Sports Nutrition Conference that some practitioners may not see coming.
Spencer, previously Director of Sports Nutrition at Cal State Northridge (now LAFC), managed over 300 student athletes.
"There's some upcoming research out of our university about reports of food insecurity among our student athlete population," Spencer revealed.
When athletes skip breakfast or entire meals, your role shifts dramatically. Instead of fine-tuning performance protocols, you're addressing basic energy availability.
"Many students are reporting that they skip meals or they skip breakfast," he explained.
"This may be one of their main meals throughout the day or at least a place where they can get some recovery fuel in."
The practical implications hit hard.
Connor Spencer (right)
Spencer's department operated in "a constant state of development, working to make sure that food is accessible to those people who need it."
Your nutrition priorities need to match your athletes' reality. If someone can't afford consistent meals, discussing supplement timing misses the mark entirely.
This forces a focus on affordable, energy-dense foods: pasta, rice, oats, yogurt. Basic staples that stretch limited budgets while meeting fundamental energy needs.
Key considerations for practitioners:
Assess food access before implementing advanced strategies.
Recognise that some athletes work while training, limiting both finances and meal prep time.
Understand your facility may be a crucial food access point.
Spencer's philosophy: "Sports and sport nutrition should be accessible to anyone who wants to perform their best."
Sometimes the most important nutrition work happens before you ever talk about performance.
Resource Roundup
News & Resources
New Carbohydrate Test
120 g per hour might not be the right fuelling strategy for everyone.
Performance Tech
Hexis Trends: Comprehensive Athlete Analytics
Daily nutrition snapshots don't reveal the patterns that drive performance breakthroughs.
Hexis has launched Trends—a comprehensive analytics dashboard that transforms daily athlete data into actionable insights across four key areas.
The platform tracks Exercise & Nutrition relationships (comparing training intensity against carbohydrate intake), Body Composition evolution (weight, body fat, eight-site skinfolds), Calories & Macros patterns, and Energy Balance.
The game-changer: Moving from reactive daily adjustments to proactive pattern recognition.
Instead of asking "Did they hit their carb target yesterday?" you're identifying "Are they consistently under-fuelling on high-intensity days over the past month?"
This shifts performance nutrition from daily firefighting to strategic periodisation based on actual behavioural patterns.
