A blog to help you optimize your full-body and life performance

With the 2016 CrossFit Games in full swing, we wanted to share our excitement with you, our readers. Not only are we looking forward to watching the athletes fight for the title of “The Fittest,” but we are also excited to have members of the InsideTracker team at The Games this year in Vendor Village. If you are going to be there, be sure to stop by to learn how you can improve your health and fitness!

For the 10^th anniversary of the Games, Games Director, Dave Castro, promised the athletes that “this year’s competition is going to push you to limits you have never pushed yourself to before. This will be the most difficult CrossFit Games, mentally and physically, we have ever done.” For the sake of good sport and competition, we hope he keeps his promise!

Recently Mark Cuban created a firestorm with his suggestion to have consumer driven blood testing performed every three months.  The immediate pushback from medical professionals boiled down to the question of blood testing being a screening process for disease detection, and not one of health and performance that should be available to any layperson, or a generally available tool for the individual with curiosity.

On the eve of Halloween, we witnessed season-ending injuries for many teams in the NBA. Injuries often prompt players themselves to come to InsideTracker and get tested with our Ultimate panel. Two years ago when we were testing professional baseball and Superbowl-bound players, we thought that organizations would be driving changes in elite sport. We were wrong: individual players and coaches are the ones taking initiative with personalized nutrition and monitoring. Being in the heart of Cambridge, Massachusetts we expected a disruption, but not as fast as we are seeing it. Private coaches are fast taking advantage of our new InsideTrackerPro system to manage and monitor the internal biochemistry of their teams.

The many, fulfilling years we at InsideTracker have spent working with elite athletes and coaches have led us to redefine our focus from the “device” to the “advice.” It is not about the latest gadget that we can get our hands on, but it’s about how we use the advice from it to initiate change, both for teams and for individuals. I was very pleased to see a recent article on biometric testing on the ESPN website, but blood analysis is no longer about interpretation; rather, it’s about the actual interventions behind it.

One hundred million Americans are expected to watch the Super Bowl this Sunday, and one key player we are interested in watching is Seattle’s Skittles-fueled running back, Marshawn Lynch. In ESPN’s Sport Science, John Brenkus and colleagues tested Lynch’s glucose levels, reaction time, and strength before and after ingesting candy. Any scientific researcher knows that this overly simplistic test construction and small sample size is insufficient for publication, but we hope more teams will start following this model of experimentation. After all, internal experimentation drives innovation in sport forward, which we have seen firsthand with Super Bowl athletes.

If you want to become faster, stronger, and more flexible, pay attention to the food that you eat. Optimal nutrition is the key to peak performance on and off the field, because food provides essential nutrients necessary to build and maintain a strong body.

“Biomechanical changes take time and persistence, but changes in diet can be made quickly and can have an immediate effect on how your body works,” says US Olympic triathlete Jarrod Shoemaker.

Are you losing weight? Are your wounds healing more slowly? Has your endurance dropped? If so, you may have a zinc deficiency. This mineral is essential to maintaining good health and optimizing athletic performance.

In fact, athletes need to pay special attention to their zinc consumption because of its key functions in the body. Healthy cell division and metabolism depend on having enough zinc; it aids in repairing your tissues after exercise. Zinc also plays a role in hormone production, including testosterone, which is essential for building lean muscle mass. You need zinc to maintain a strong heart and respiratory system, as well as healthy cholesterol levels.

What’s a small thing you can do that can have a big effect on your performance? Drink enough water. Our bodies are mostly comprised of fluid, which means that every cell, tissue, and organ needs enough water to function. While plain H20 is the most important part of hydration, you also need electrolytes like potassium and sodium to perform at your best.

As an athlete, you work hard to improve your physical performance. But more training is not necessarily better training. Without enough rest and recovery, intense training regimens can actually backfire and compromise your ability to perform well. Exercise breaks down your muscles; rest stimulates growth and repair. The combination of too much exercise with too little recovery time can result in "over-training syndrome."