This weeks issue is powered by The Performance Nutrition Network
Dear Performance Nutrition Leaders,
This week: an exciting performance nutrition conference, the latest news, and important product research.
💡 INDUSTRY EVENTS
BlackBox is back.
Dr James Morehen and Dr Daniel Martin are running their applied conference for a second year, this time at Kindred in Hammersmith on 25 September.
The premise has not changed. Learn from people doing the job at the highest level, rather than sitting through another round of abstract research dissemination.
Dr Warren Bradley framed the lineup better than any tagline could.
He pointed out that the speakers are not just a roster of names.
They are a group that has published hundreds of papers, built businesses, worked across some of the largest team sport organisations in the world, and collaborated with the likes of Adidas, Nike, and NASA.
Their willingness to share openly, including the failures, is the whole point of the day.
The programme runs across three sessions covering applied practice, career decisions, and business development.
Confirmed speakers so far include Dr Dan Martin, Alex Preece, Dr Emily Jevons, Dr Andreas Kasper, Dr Carl Langan-Evans, Dr Jamie Pugh, Dr Paola Rodríguez-Giustiniani, and Dr Warren Bradley.
Both PN—INSIDER co-founders will also be in the room. If you want to talk through what we are building, come and find us.
📈NEWS
Myprotein hiring NPD technologist
Arizona Athletics hiring nutritionists
Performance Chef opportunity at the ECB
Alana Francis appointed dietitian at NSW Waratahs
Hexis tease product updates coming summer 2026
Cardiff City hiring first team performance nutritionist
Sigma nutrition radio nutrition in elite rugby new episode
Daniel Alcock shares introduction of energy bar at Millfield School
Dr Nessan Costello is running 215km across Sumba to tackle child malnutrition
George Davis recruiting coaches to help understand gut microbiome strategies in professional football
Bob Seebohar appointed head of Performance Nutrition and Sports Scientist for the Milwaukee Bucks.
Have an industry update you’d like to share? Drop us an email → [email protected]
💡PERFORMANCE TECH
Product research.
Here's how most users appraise a new formula.
Read the label, then check each ingredient against the literature. Magnesium has studies. Ashwagandha has studies. Apigenin has studies.
Dr Peter Tierney, MARCHON's Head of Human Performance, keeps pointing at the gap in that habit.
His point, raised in a recent podcast conversation with Dr Sophie Bostock: single-ingredient evidence gets borrowed to stand in for a whole-product claim. Far fewer brands test their actual combination, in the real world, with both objective and subjective data.
Tierney holds a PhD and has run human-participant research — so it's a methodologist making the case, not a marketer.
It's also what he's now doing alongside Liam Holmes at MARCHON. Their Advanced Sleep testing surveyed 159 users; the company reports 90% noted some improvement.
They're now layering WHOOP data to add an objective measure alongside the self-reports.
MARCHON are not claiming this replaces a controlled trial. It's genuinely interesting user testing, shared openly, and they're the first to say where it sits.
That openness is the whole point. They're testing the product people actually buy, not just its parts.
A full controlled trial would be a strong move, and potentially the next one. But most brands haven't got even this far.
And it's becoming more doable. Decentralised CROs — StudySetGo among them — run remote, home-based studies that could make a proper product-level trial feasible, not just faster surveys.
So the job isn't to dismiss primary data or swallow it. It's to know which tier you're reading — and to ask whether the product was tested, or just its ingredients.
