What have I learned from studying the Energy Availability Levels of athletes?
After two years of asking athletes to track their energy availability, Coach Philip discusses his learning observations below.
Since I wrote this article in 2021, I decided to take a more proactive approach to the fuelling and nutrition of my athletes. In particular, I realised that though nutrition can be a very triggering conversation, there was every chance that athletes I was working with were accidentally under-fuelling based on a lack of knowledge or ignorance rather than specifically constricting their nutritional intake.
As a brief reminder, Energy Availability is the remaining energy after you remove all exercise fuel costs from the amount consumed. For example, if you use 1000kCal through two hours of sport in a day, and consume 2,500kCal, then you only have 1,500kCal for “living”. This needs to be about 45kCal/Kg of Fat-Free Mass for good Energy Availability. Critically, if athletes drop below 30kCal/Kg (female) or 25kCal/Kg (male) for more than a few days, they will see a reduced endocrine function and shift towards Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport or RED-S. Though this simplifies the complex science of nutrition to a daily target number, the simplicity is often its effectiveness.
Without going into specifics about individuals, I will summarise my common findings. People may recognise themselves in these paragraphs. They are familiar to many athletes; I am not highlighting anyone in particular! It is because it applies to so many people it is worth sharing! Equally, not everyone I work with responded in any or all of the ways highlighted below!
Energy requirements, in general, were too low.
Generally, athletes were under-fuelling. Only one athlete consistently hit their target of 45kCal/Kg at the first time check. Most athletes were usually below or way below the 45kCal/Kg target, and it made no difference if athletes categorised themselves or were categorised as “larger” or “leaner”. Often athletes were at Low Energy Availability levels. The alarming point here was that most athletes had no concept that they were at the LEA level, nor were doing so deliberately to change body composition or lose weight (more on that later). Furthermore, this was a snapshot of their typical approach. Often, athletes may not have changed this for several years!
Given that a calorie surplus is required to produce muscle, many athletes were not making the best use of their training or recovery time. As they are usually short on both, this seems like an obvious way to improve their performance without making more considerable sacrifices around time or bigger sessions.
Nutrition is often a polarising topic. You only have to look a the high v. low carbs approach. Nevertheless, this is becoming too nuanced. Athletes seem quick to eliminate nutrition from their diet for performance gains but miss the obvious that their total energy intake is too low. This is demonstrated effectively through the lent period, where it may be a simple case of questioning the point of “giving up (e.g. sweets) for lent” without identifying what you will replace them with! Even when you look at the more performance-focused nutrition strategies, they all begin with the often-overlooked sentence: “Energy requirements must first be met”.
In some instances, athletes made significant changes after hitting their required energy availability. They saw better responses in their training and general daily life by eating more and hitting their EA targets. Several athletes went through a process where they didn’t think they could eat as much as was needed, to unable to recognise a time when they survived on what they had previously thought of as normal! It has been so rewarding to see several athletes make significant changes to their fuelling and see better responses in non-performance areas of their life (as well as performance ones!)
Limited daily change based on needs
Often athletes stick to their routines, and food was more or less the same each day. However, training changed a lot. There were some interesting observations around their macro intake, but this is not the focus of this conversation. Often athletes were not adjusting their intake on the big or intensive days. This meant they went into the next few days under-fuelled. We often saw this with athletes struggling early in the week after a more significant weekend of training.
To help athletes change their perception of this, we aimed to hit their non-exercise needs through their main meals and then fuel their sessions accordingly. This made it easier for athletes to stick to what they knew while adjusting their intake through or around training. However, that was often a big leap in intake around breakfast and lunches, which were typically lower in intake.
Some athletes didn’t bother filling it out!
Given the opportunity presented by doing a quick check on their intake, it was interesting that athletes struggled to put the information in because it took too long or was onerous. I hoped this was the main reason, not that they didn’t want to see the results! However, it is worth observing that “not knowing” is often a strategy athletes may use to avoid something! We sometimes see this with athletes avoiding test sessions for the same reason.
Though sometimes athletes think they knew they were on target (or not), the interesting dilemma was that often their perception shifts, meaning their angle on what is or what is not also enough adjusts. This aligns with their environmental factors (e.g. non-athletic friends eating smaller portions) or their down-regulated metabolism, where they adapt to not eating as much. The same is also true the other way around!
The amount of fuel needed was significantly concerning to Athletes
The pushback was usually fairly firm when athletes discovered they were under their target. The target amount was usually significantly more than what they believed they needed and certainly higher than the general population information. For example, most female athletes need way more than the 1500kCal that is banded around as what women need per day, and that amount is before they add their training on top! If a female triathlete has done two sessions in the day, they have used most of that 24-hour quantity in only two hours! Even recognising that nutrition, burn rates, tracking etc., all have a margin for error, the essential fundamental points still stand.
“I feel ok” was probably the most over-used point of reflection or the “objective” data point that athletes in a state of LEA fell back to when hearing how low they were. Biologically, this makes sense. The point of looking at energy availability is that the body will down-regulate to hit this energy amount (think of it as putting your phone into battery-saving mode – it doesn’t stop you from making a call, but it stops the background activities that may drain the battery more). An athlete is unlikely to feel any worse because many of these changes will be done slowly or over a long time span and subsequently are difficult to perceive. The counter-point is more straightforward! If you feel OK at this point, imagine how much better you will feel as a result of giving your body what it needs! Still, though, this is the most significant anchor to forward progression, and there is disbelief that they actually need that much!
What should the coach do if the coach aims to “do no harm" but an athlete is in a state of Low Energy Availability? A coach should not or could not set more training because there will be no training effect, only an ill-health effect which makes them negligent. This poses an interesting dilemma for coaches – when can they or should they step back? How can the athlete become more empowered with their development, and can they help the coach make these changes??
Conclusion
I do not look at this with athletes all the time, but we do review it occasionally. Given that training and life loads are constantly changing, we check in throughout the season to ensure we focus on good health.
Given that food, diets, and healthy eating can be a very triggering conversation, we looked at managing these interactions carefully. Where appropriate, after this initial check, we may refer an athlete to a nutritionist or further help if needed.
Nevertheless, it was remarkable that given the facts: if you are below these targets, you are unhealthy, and the “simple” solution is to “eat more”, some athletes were very reluctant to buy into this approach. Much of this concerns the experiences and observations athletes have “marketed” to them through their lives; or the unrealistic comparisons athletes make. In endurance sports, where power-to-weight is commonly used as a performance metric, weight or body composition can often get dragged into conversations without people truly understanding the implications. Athletes were more concerned with this aspect of performance opportunity than their health! Using numbers, the balance is worth thinking about. Athletes were reluctant to move from 10-40% under fuelled (or unhealthy) to avoid getting heavier. They believed staying on the right side of their power-to-weight was more important than staying healthy. However, the reality would be that the athlete is unlikely to swing that far over their targeted energy availability!
Since incorporating this as part of our athlete discussion and conversation, we saw some fundamental developments across all the athletes who were tracking. We saw illness and injury rates reduce, and athletes invested more time in their nutrition needs and began using our nutritionist to maximise the training effect, improve their recovery and become more efficient with the time that they had. I personally feel pretty strongly that training and performance often focus on the “hero” sessions and the “sexy” bits of training but neglect to focus on the fundamentals and don’t seem to put health first.
Looking at the stats after a couple of years, the athlete is unlikely to be over fuelling but is likely to need education on appropriate fuelling to balance their health and performance. Therefore, let's look at more positive approaches to performance without sacrificing an athlete's health. If nothing else, athletes should pay attention to what they are eating, not for conversations around performance (power to weight) but to ensure they remain healthy and have a long life in endurance sports.
Philip is the founder of Tri Training Harder LLP. He’s a British Triathlon Level 3 coach, and has been coaching for over a decade and is involved with mentoring and developing other coaches.
Philip has have coached athletes to European and World AG wins, elite racing, many Kona qualifications, IRONMAN podiums and AG wins.
Alongside the conventional development through many CPD courses, he has also been fortunate enough to work alongside experts in the fields of Physiotherapy, Strength and Conditioning, Nutrition, Psychology, Biomechanics, Sports Medicine. Putting this knowledge into practice he has worked with thousands of athletes to various degrees, from training camps in Portugal and around Europe, clinics in the UK and online coaching.
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