I got round to doing a video comparing my two one hour power tests and the glucose data from them! You can watch that here: th-cam.com/video/HhQCqzQne00/w-d-xo.html
Thank you so much for putting the effort of making such a great review! Very informative and extremely useful indeed. And don't worry about the length: one 30-minute superb review is still much shorter than 8 useless 10-minute videos, which don't provide as much qualiry content as yours! ;-) I just wish YT had suggested your video before the others...
Great review. I am using Supersapiens and it definitely has added useful info to my fueling strategy. , Not only in workouts, but overall eating as you mentioned. Thanks for your work
Thank you for this great review! I have type 1 diabetes and do lots of experiments with diet and blood glucose monitoring. As a diabetic, I try to keep my glucose under 130mg/dL at all times… and try to stay closer to 90mg/dL as much as I can. Here is what I have found: 1- my performance with glucose over 80mg/dL is pretty much the same. Below 70, though, performance definitely drops. 2- glucose over 100 for extended periods of time looks a lot like diabetes. I think that Supersapiens’ target range borders on unethical. 3- because of the delay in readings, I’ve found that I detect “bonk” before interstitial fluid monitors do. Not sure if that applies to non diabetics who may have slower glucose movement… but CGM had little value for me as a T1 athlete.
Hey, thanks as well for your comment and input! It's interesting to hear from someone who has used it for sport whilst having t1dm. Having used CGMs intermittently now since I made this first video I would definitely agree with 2 + 3. I had one instance of potentially noticing performance change with low BG via supersapiens but haven't otherwise noticed any real correlation (but that isn't necessarily surprising!). And I think number 3 is such a clincher for me. Whilst most athletes probably shouldn't get the same sort of bonk/hypo as a t1 athlete, the fact is that they're still playing catch up because of the lag time. Better in my opinion to not rely on the reading and have a proper fuelling plan in place - in which case the CGM kind of becomes pointless.
Refreshing to see a medical professional give a thoroughly clear, informative and unbiased assessment of this product. The lack of clear and definitive data when the two extremes of fasted and fuelled exercise is compared is sufficient scepticism for me not to consider purchasing. If the only positive of this product was to monitor glucose spikes after meals you may as well just purchase the interstitial device to, probably, get a more unambiguous result. Just for the record, I used to cycle 2-3 hours, fasted, at tempo early, morning for a couple of years and for comparison I would occasionally ride fully fuelled to see if there were any performance benefits, and for me personally, there weren't . The only reason I stopped fasted exercise, in the end, was because of muscle mass loss through autophagy. Which ultimately effects sprinting and hill climbing. An excellent review! I'm now subscribed !
Hey Tony, thanks for the kind words. In truth I really wanted this to be better than it was. I stopped using it just because I didn't find it worth the cost. I used it in various races too and just couldn't get any useful information from it. My 60 minute power test fasted vs unfasted was probably the only time I saw real potential for informing my own training and racing. Thanks again!
Hi James, brilliant videos as usual. I had some experience with Supersapiens have used few months last year in prep for HIMs and IM. I completely agree with you that it is a tool to learn on how to fuel better pre, during and after a race. I competed in a couple of races with the Device and it was hard to keep connection and realizability on the data. A Great tool but not sure if ready yet for racing. I’d love to have a similar tool for lactate ;-)
Thank you! 🙂 Good to hear about your experiences with it. I'm looking forward to seeing if I can use it to benefit my actual racing itself. Haha honestly I've thought a lot about a similar device to display lactate. But actually I think it would have to be banned - it would be too much of an advantage if it worked properly!
Thank you James. Very thorough as usual. I have seen an interview of Gustav Iden mentioning the device to pre-full properly and avoiding peak and valley during the effort. Indeed the value of the device maybe tilt toward the types of carbs you consume as well as the volume to avoid glucose variability. I would love to see the data on an Olympic triathlon with different types of fuel before and during.
You're welcome, thank you! So far that's certainly my biggest area to explore and see whether it truly makes a difference to my performance or not. And I'll definitely be doing some Olympic distance races next year and using this during them to analyse the data after! 😀
Thanks for this vlog, I too had some similar results that kinda didn't make sense and left me scratching my head.... I have mixed feelings about the device it's certainly a great concept but unfortunately for me it has some issues, ultimately I wanted to use the device for a couple of reasons. 1, highlight any dietary improvements that could be made. 2, Fueling prior and when exercising. I had a 50k trail run fast approaching and some big training runs prior, unfortunately I was let down by the quirks of the live Garmin data, it never worked when needed most and this felt like a real let down, SS replaced my sensors which I will use next spring when training for my next Ironman, hopefully by then the live streaming is far more stable than it is right now. Thanks again
Good to hear your experiences with it. I think that's probably a pretty fair comment for it currently - great concept but needs a bit more exploration and tweaking to get it where it needs to be. I'm certainly interested in the data and feel the device could be beneficial for a lot of people. Great to hear they replaced your sensors too. I've found the customer service team to be helpful and for me that usually speaks volumes.
Very interesting, thanks! Blummenfelt's coach Olav Aleksander Bu also mentioned in the latest Physical Performance podcast that he's not using the data that comes out of the glucose monitor. Which says something I guess
You're welcome! 🙂 Interesting, I hadn't heard that - it does say something indeed. I wonder whether that will change as Kristian does more longer races and competes at ironman distance or whether it's still not useful?
@@NutritionTriathlon yes! He said that for one athlete there were some interesting observations though. But as you'd expect this whole podcast with him is very interesting ;)
Sounds like it's one for me to listen to! Not sure if he coaches Gustav or not but someone else commented on this video saying Gustav has used the data to avoid highs and lows. Perhaps he's had similar findings to what I noticed during my power test!
Great review, thanks. I am considering getting SS to help me build a fuelling strategy for a long distance cycle race. The real benefit I am looking for is to avoid under fuelling (and bonking) and over fuelling (causing gastro distress). In my mind I thought having my glucose readout on my wahoo would help me know when to fuel. But having watched your video I am not sure it will do that accurately?
Hi Alistair, thanks for the comment! If I'm totally honest I wouldn't really recommend SS for for that purpose. I don't think it will be responsive enough for your needs and your fuelling strategy can definitely be built successfully without it. If you have the money to spend I would suggest having a couple of consultations with a registered sports nutritionist or dietitian. In that time you should easily be able to come up with a personalised plan for you, but most importantly learn what and why along the way so that you can do it for yourself afterwards. Don't get me wrong, you could definitely do it without any consultations because there's lots of great free advice out there - but if you're looking to invest time and money into it I'd say that would be a far better return. Hope that helps, happy to answer anymore questions you have!
Thanks for the very informative video. I have been looking at getting this for a while. My only concern is my wetsuit which is tight AF. Don't mind a little pain just worried it might pull it off. Any thoughts? TIA
No probs! Personally, I don't think it would be an issue with the wetsuit as long as it's stuck down properly. I used it in many a triathlon without an issue. I would say my opinion is now strongly that CGMs in general are not really beneficial for triathlon training or racing, but that's obviously your personal call to make 🙂
Wow. The power test was really interesting. Is it possible you experienced a hypoglycemic rebound from carbs in the 'fuelled' workout. Meanwhile in "fasted" you were drawing on fat stores. This is a topic that I grapple with as someone who is generally low carb but working out a lot. I add carbs but they can have negative impacts on how I feel depending on timing.
I found it super interesting too. Yes, I suspect a rebound hypoglycaemia there. With the fasted test, whilst I think I will have been using proportionately more fats than the fuelled test I suspect I was still carbohydrate dominant. Overall I do perform better with carbohydrates, but timing affects me too. That's part of the fun and the puzzle to work out 😊
Hey Mate, thanks for the review. Question for you that i cant seem to find the answer on. If you use the senor with energy band during an ironman, will you get the readings to the energy band from the entire race? Understood that you will only get recordings to the phone for 8 hours.. however i want to make sure that i have readings to the band for the final two hours.. if im doing a 10 hour IM. I think the final two hours are the most important time to have this data..
Hey, thank you! I'm afraid I'm not totally sure on this one as I haven't tried the energy band. I'd say it's worth contacting SS about this as I don't want to give you the wrong answer!
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Hello. Your channel is really great and I have one question and maybe it would be also interesting for your next video? What is your opinion about raw food nutrition and long triathlon? Is it possible to eat only fruit, vegetable and nuts and train for long distance triathlon? I would be very grateful for your thoughts? Thanks
Hi there. Thanks very much. As to your question, I think I'd probably answer it back with 'why'? Is there a specific reason you'd want to consider raw food nutrition and long distance triathlon? The answer is yes, it's certainly possible. Is it ideal? No. Too many drawbacks and difficulties to that, and as far as I'm aware it's no better for long term health either.
ปีที่แล้ว
@@NutritionTriathlon thank you very much my your answer. I really appreciate it. I am a fan of raw food nutrition. That is a nutrition where you eat fruit, vegetable, and nuts only. According to that nutrition every processed food is not good for humans. A am also long distance AG triathlete so I would like to hear your opinion about that. Your channel is really fantastic and unique and I yor are also top class expert 👏👏👏
Thanks Ivica, really appreciate it. I have a bit of a backlog of videos currently so I won't be able to get round to this just yet, but I hope to cover it in the future. Realistically any diet is possible with triathlon but there are definitely things that make it easier or harder. For example, getting enough carbs and protein on a raw diet is likely to be difficult, especially without eating lots of fat too. That will present its own problems. Hopefully I'll get a chance to expand on it more in the future!
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Thank you very much for your answer. I also think that it's going to be hard but I will definitely try it because all that philosophy of eating raw food makes sense for me. There are many options for combination of healthy raw food meals. I will inform you about. Best regards 🙂
A bit hard to say specifically how to improve mitochondrial function just with nutrition. It's the whole package: long term consistency with training, low and high intensity training, short and long training sessions - all supported by good nutrition that underpins it and allows you to actually perform and then recover from your training.
I got round to doing a video comparing my two one hour power tests and the glucose data from them! You can watch that here:
th-cam.com/video/HhQCqzQne00/w-d-xo.html
Thank you so much for putting the effort of making such a great review! Very informative and extremely useful indeed. And don't worry about the length: one 30-minute superb review is still much shorter than 8 useless 10-minute videos, which don't provide as much qualiry content as yours! ;-) I just wish YT had suggested your video before the others...
You're welcome, and thank you for such a kind comment! Great to hear that you found it useful 😊 the time spent making it was worth it 😅
Great review. I am using Supersapiens and it definitely has added useful info to my fueling strategy. , Not only in workouts, but overall eating as you mentioned. Thanks for your work
That's great to hear! I think you can get some genuinely helpful insights into so I'm glad you found this useful. And you're welcome! 🙂
Thank you for this great review! I have type 1 diabetes and do lots of experiments with diet and blood glucose monitoring. As a diabetic, I try to keep my glucose under 130mg/dL at all times… and try to stay closer to 90mg/dL as much as I can. Here is what I have found:
1- my performance with glucose over 80mg/dL is pretty much the same. Below 70, though, performance definitely drops.
2- glucose over 100 for extended periods of time looks a lot like diabetes. I think that Supersapiens’ target range borders on unethical.
3- because of the delay in readings, I’ve found that I detect “bonk” before interstitial fluid monitors do. Not sure if that applies to non diabetics who may have slower glucose movement… but CGM had little value for me as a T1 athlete.
Hey, thanks as well for your comment and input! It's interesting to hear from someone who has used it for sport whilst having t1dm. Having used CGMs intermittently now since I made this first video I would definitely agree with 2 + 3. I had one instance of potentially noticing performance change with low BG via supersapiens but haven't otherwise noticed any real correlation (but that isn't necessarily surprising!).
And I think number 3 is such a clincher for me. Whilst most athletes probably shouldn't get the same sort of bonk/hypo as a t1 athlete, the fact is that they're still playing catch up because of the lag time. Better in my opinion to not rely on the reading and have a proper fuelling plan in place - in which case the CGM kind of becomes pointless.
Refreshing to see a medical professional give a thoroughly clear, informative and unbiased assessment of this product. The lack of clear and definitive data when the two extremes of fasted and fuelled exercise is compared is sufficient scepticism for me not to consider purchasing. If the only positive of this product was to monitor glucose spikes after meals you may as well just purchase the interstitial device to, probably, get a more unambiguous result.
Just for the record, I used to cycle 2-3 hours, fasted, at tempo early, morning for a couple of years and for comparison I would occasionally ride fully fuelled to see if there were any performance benefits, and for me personally, there weren't . The only reason I stopped fasted exercise, in the end, was because of muscle mass loss through autophagy. Which ultimately effects sprinting and hill climbing.
An excellent review! I'm now subscribed !
Hey Tony, thanks for the kind words. In truth I really wanted this to be better than it was. I stopped using it just because I didn't find it worth the cost. I used it in various races too and just couldn't get any useful information from it.
My 60 minute power test fasted vs unfasted was probably the only time I saw real potential for informing my own training and racing.
Thanks again!
Thanks so much for this video! Probably the only useful one out there. Sooo many good info. Cheers mate!
Hey, you're welcome! I'm glad you found it useful 🙂
Hi James, brilliant videos as usual. I had some experience with Supersapiens have used few months last year in prep for HIMs and IM. I completely agree with you that it is a tool to learn on how to fuel better pre, during and after a race. I competed in a couple of races with the Device and it was hard to keep connection and realizability on the data. A Great tool but not sure if ready yet for racing. I’d love to have a similar tool for lactate ;-)
Thank you! 🙂 Good to hear about your experiences with it. I'm looking forward to seeing if I can use it to benefit my actual racing itself.
Haha honestly I've thought a lot about a similar device to display lactate. But actually I think it would have to be banned - it would be too much of an advantage if it worked properly!
Thank you James. Very thorough as usual. I have seen an interview of Gustav Iden mentioning the device to pre-full properly and avoiding peak and valley during the effort. Indeed the value of the device maybe tilt toward the types of carbs you consume as well as the volume to avoid glucose variability. I would love to see the data on an Olympic triathlon with different types of fuel before and during.
You're welcome, thank you! So far that's certainly my biggest area to explore and see whether it truly makes a difference to my performance or not.
And I'll definitely be doing some Olympic distance races next year and using this during them to analyse the data after! 😀
Thanks for this vlog, I too had some similar results that kinda didn't make sense and left me scratching my head.... I have mixed feelings about the device it's certainly a great concept but unfortunately for me it has some issues, ultimately I wanted to use the device for a couple of reasons.
1, highlight any dietary improvements that could be made.
2, Fueling prior and when exercising.
I had a 50k trail run fast approaching and some big training runs prior, unfortunately I was let down by the quirks of the live Garmin data, it never worked when needed most and this felt like a real let down, SS replaced my sensors which I will use next spring when training for my next Ironman, hopefully by then the live streaming is far more stable than it is right now.
Thanks again
Good to hear your experiences with it. I think that's probably a pretty fair comment for it currently - great concept but needs a bit more exploration and tweaking to get it where it needs to be.
I'm certainly interested in the data and feel the device could be beneficial for a lot of people.
Great to hear they replaced your sensors too. I've found the customer service team to be helpful and for me that usually speaks volumes.
Very interesting, thanks! Blummenfelt's coach Olav Aleksander Bu also mentioned in the latest Physical Performance podcast that he's not using the data that comes out of the glucose monitor. Which says something I guess
You're welcome! 🙂 Interesting, I hadn't heard that - it does say something indeed. I wonder whether that will change as Kristian does more longer races and competes at ironman distance or whether it's still not useful?
@@NutritionTriathlon yes! He said that for one athlete there were some interesting observations though. But as you'd expect this whole podcast with him is very interesting ;)
Sounds like it's one for me to listen to! Not sure if he coaches Gustav or not but someone else commented on this video saying Gustav has used the data to avoid highs and lows. Perhaps he's had similar findings to what I noticed during my power test!
Great review, thanks.
I am considering getting SS to help me build a fuelling strategy for a long distance cycle race. The real benefit I am looking for is to avoid under fuelling (and bonking) and over fuelling (causing gastro distress).
In my mind I thought having my glucose readout on my wahoo would help me know when to fuel.
But having watched your video I am not sure it will do that accurately?
Hi Alistair, thanks for the comment! If I'm totally honest I wouldn't really recommend SS for for that purpose. I don't think it will be responsive enough for your needs and your fuelling strategy can definitely be built successfully without it.
If you have the money to spend I would suggest having a couple of consultations with a registered sports nutritionist or dietitian. In that time you should easily be able to come up with a personalised plan for you, but most importantly learn what and why along the way so that you can do it for yourself afterwards.
Don't get me wrong, you could definitely do it without any consultations because there's lots of great free advice out there - but if you're looking to invest time and money into it I'd say that would be a far better return.
Hope that helps, happy to answer anymore questions you have!
Thanks for the very informative video. I have been looking at getting this for a while. My only concern is my wetsuit which is tight AF. Don't mind a little pain just worried it might pull it off. Any thoughts? TIA
No probs! Personally, I don't think it would be an issue with the wetsuit as long as it's stuck down properly. I used it in many a triathlon without an issue.
I would say my opinion is now strongly that CGMs in general are not really beneficial for triathlon training or racing, but that's obviously your personal call to make 🙂
Wow. The power test was really interesting.
Is it possible you experienced a hypoglycemic rebound from carbs in the 'fuelled' workout.
Meanwhile in "fasted" you were drawing on fat stores.
This is a topic that I grapple with as someone who is generally low carb but working out a lot.
I add carbs but they can have negative impacts on how I feel depending on timing.
I found it super interesting too.
Yes, I suspect a rebound hypoglycaemia there. With the fasted test, whilst I think I will have been using proportionately more fats than the fuelled test I suspect I was still carbohydrate dominant.
Overall I do perform better with carbohydrates, but timing affects me too. That's part of the fun and the puzzle to work out 😊
Hey Mate, thanks for the review. Question for you that i cant seem to find the answer on. If you use the senor with energy band during an ironman, will you get the readings to the energy band from the entire race? Understood that you will only get recordings to the phone for 8 hours.. however i want to make sure that i have readings to the band for the final two hours.. if im doing a 10 hour IM. I think the final two hours are the most important time to have this data..
Hey, thank you! I'm afraid I'm not totally sure on this one as I haven't tried the energy band. I'd say it's worth contacting SS about this as I don't want to give you the wrong answer!
Hello. Your channel is really great and I have one question and maybe it would be also interesting for your next video? What is your opinion about raw food nutrition and long triathlon? Is it possible to eat only fruit, vegetable and nuts and train for long distance triathlon? I would be very grateful for your thoughts? Thanks
Hi there. Thanks very much. As to your question, I think I'd probably answer it back with 'why'? Is there a specific reason you'd want to consider raw food nutrition and long distance triathlon? The answer is yes, it's certainly possible. Is it ideal? No. Too many drawbacks and difficulties to that, and as far as I'm aware it's no better for long term health either.
@@NutritionTriathlon thank you very much my your answer. I really appreciate it. I am a fan of raw food nutrition. That is a nutrition where you eat fruit, vegetable, and nuts only. According to that nutrition every processed food is not good for humans. A am also long distance AG triathlete so I would like to hear your opinion about that. Your channel is really fantastic and unique and I yor are also top class expert 👏👏👏
Thanks Ivica, really appreciate it. I have a bit of a backlog of videos currently so I won't be able to get round to this just yet, but I hope to cover it in the future.
Realistically any diet is possible with triathlon but there are definitely things that make it easier or harder.
For example, getting enough carbs and protein on a raw diet is likely to be difficult, especially without eating lots of fat too. That will present its own problems.
Hopefully I'll get a chance to expand on it more in the future!
Thank you very much for your answer. I also think that it's going to be hard but I will definitely try it because all that philosophy of eating raw food makes sense for me. There are many options for combination of healthy raw food meals. I will inform you about. Best regards 🙂
I can't wait to try this, but unavailable in Canada yet... :(
Bummer! Hopefully it will be soon so you can give it a go
Bummer! Hopefully it will be soon so you can give it a go
How can i improve the Function of Mitochondria with better nutrition?
A bit hard to say specifically how to improve mitochondrial function just with nutrition. It's the whole package: long term consistency with training, low and high intensity training, short and long training sessions - all supported by good nutrition that underpins it and allows you to actually perform and then recover from your training.
To bad it is not available in the US - yet. Good review.
Thanks Joe. Yeah that surprised me, but hopefully it will be soon.