In this YouTube segment, a sports nutrition coach rates a series of popular athlete nutrition trends on a 1‑to‑10 scale, offering practical explanations, age‑specific cautions, and dosage guidance. The coach dismisses fasted training for 12‑24‑year‑old athletes, emphasizing the need for carbohydrate fueling before practice. Creatine receives a 7.5 rating, recommended only after puberty due to limited research on younger teens. Organic foods earn a 7, praised for quality but noted as costly, with advice to wash conventional produce if needed. Pre‑workout blends are rated a 3; caffeine and beta‑alanine can be beneficial at specific doses, but the coach warns against reliance on complex formulas. Wearing a hoodie to sweat is a 2, highlighted as a misguided performance myth and dehydration risk. The carnivore diet also scores a 2, criticized for lacking carbs and micronutrients, with a call for balanced meals. Carbohydrate intake before practice receives a perfect 10, described as essential fuel for muscle energy stores. BCAAs are rated 2‑3, deemed unnecessary when adequate protein is consumed. Bulking and cutting are given low scores (2‑2.5) and framed as context‑dependent strategies that differ between performance sport and bodybuilding aesthetics. Beetroot juice earns a 7.5 for its vasodilatory effect that can boost oxygen delivery and endurance, though not essential for every athlete. Pre‑game candy is rated around 4.7, recognized as a quick carb source but inferior to whole‑food options. The coach concludes by acknowledging the noisy landscape of nutrition advice and promotes a personalized coaching program with meal and hydration plans, linking to a description for interested viewers.
Chapters
I'm rating athlete nutrition trends as a sports nutrition coach on a scale from 1 to 10. Let's go.
Training fasted, 1.
Do not do this. I will get hate for this in them comments cuz people will say, oh, that's stupid, you can use fat as, as energy and, and then all of these awesome things. Cool, if you wanna do that, that's amazing. But if, if you are an athlete that is 12 to 24 years old and you are going for performance for a certain sport, you guys gotta be fueled. Showing up to your game or your practice, your event where you feel like you wanna have peak performance and show out in front of a coach or outperform your competition. If you show up on an empty tank, how do you expect yourself to do that? Showing up on an empty tank is like a race car showing up to a big race on an empty tank. That's just not gonna work. It can be the best, fastest, most expensive race car in the fricking world, but if it don't have gas or energy in the tank, it's not going anywhere. It's not gonna do anything. It's not winning any races. Same thing goes for you. You could have the best skill, the best athleticism, You could be the best athlete in the freaking world, but if you don't have energy in the tank, I'm sorry, it's gonna get you nowhere. So, one, show up fueled, eat carbs.
Creatine.
Ooh, I like creatine. I would give that a 7.5. The reason for that is not all athletes need it, specifically young athletes. I would say if you have hit puberty and beyond, creatine is a fantastic, the best supplement for you to be taking. Younger athletes that are tweenagers and still going through puberty, I personally do not recommend it because there's not a whole lot of studies and literature out there that have tested creatine on that demographic, that age of kids. So if you have hit puberty, if you are lifting in the gym, if you wanna increase your strength and power, creatine is amazing. And yes, take it.
Eating organic foods.
Eating organic. I mean, I would give that a 7 as well. Like organic foods, there's nothing bad with organic foods. It's amazing. Are they expensive? Yes. So here, here's my issue when it comes to that. I don't wanna give it a 10 because I don't I don't want people to think, oh, I have to buy organic apples or else I shouldn't buy any apples at all. That is not true. I see a lot of people saying, well, these potato chips are organic, but these carrots aren't, therefore I'm gonna eat these potato chips. I wouldn't say that either. We just wash the carrots very well, right? It's all about getting the nutrients into your body. If you can afford organic foods, great, get organic foods. If you can't, get the next best option and wash like the pesticides or chemicals that you guys are worried about. Off, wash it in baking soda, get it off there, and just fuel your dang body with fruits, veggies, and whole foods that God gave us on this great green earth. Pre-workout, I'd probably give that one a 3. There's a lot of pre-workouts that have like a big blend of different, different substances and different supplements within the one supplement itself, and that's what I don't love. Caffeine can be awesome for athletes. It helps with focus, it can help with endurance. So that can be awesome if taken at the right dosage, which is 3 to 6 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, 1 hour before a workout. Don't take If it's within 8 hours of you going to sleep, caffeine can be awesome. Beta alanine, also found in pre-workout, that too can be awesome if 4 to 6 grams are taken every single day for up to 4 weeks as a performance benefit. But I don't love the pre-workout in itself because usually it's used by kind of gym rats who aren't getting great sleep and are using it more of a bandaid instead of an, a performance enhancer aid.
Wearing a hoodie to sweat more.
2 for the athletes I coach. I've seen kids in the past see a really amazing athlete run with a hoodie and get really sweaty with a hoodie and say like, sweat equals hard work, I'm gonna, I'm gonna wear the hoodie so I can look like I'm working too. Sweat does not equal how hard you've worked or how good of an athlete you are. I do see the like wrestling, boxing kind of weight class world do this a lot. I get it, you guys got to make weight. I'm not going to claim to be an expert in the wrestling or boxing or weight class world. I don't love thought of dehydrating yourself to make weight. So overall, I'm gonna give that a 2.
Carnivore diet.
I got a lot of 2s rolling in here today. Carnivore diet. Meat is amazing, guys. You need to eat meat. You gotta get your protein. You gotta get your vitamin D and your iron. Carnivore diet. The thought of carnivore diet is awesome. However, I don't love that you're not getting a ton of carbs. You're not getting a ton of greens. You guys need just a balanced diet as athletes. With protein, with carbs, with fats, with fruits, and with vegetables. Instead of saying, yeah, only carnivore diet or only keto, just eat a balanced diet that's going to help you perform well.
Eating carbs before practice.
10, baby. Um, I love, love carbs. Your muscles have little muscle energy storage tanks. Those tanks gotta be full in order to go, in order to move, in order to work. If they are empty, You're gonna suck, you're gonna hit a wall, you're gonna feel like crap. You gotta make sure that you're filling those up beforehand. So carbs are the gas to those energy tanks. So if you eat some applesauce and some toast and honey before practice, you're gonna feel really good at practice. But if you eat nothing before practice, you're gonna feel really sucky at practice. So eat those carbs beforehand. I give it a 10.
BCAAs.
Branch chain. I, I'm gonna give that one a 2 or a 3 as well. Overall, get your protein in. Branched-chain amino acids, like, yeah, they're cool. There, there are some cool benefits to it, but I think that we get way too deep into this for like our teenage athlete world, and we just honestly need good protein from meat, from dairy. You can even have a whey protein supplement. That's gonna get you like 97% of the way there.
Bulking and cutting for athletes.
2, 2.5, 2.5. It depends on your sport, obviously, and what your goals are. If your goal is for aesthetics, that is more of of a bodybuilding approach. That's not bad. It's just there's right and there's wrong for every single athlete. What's right for an athlete is to, if you're trying to bulk, if you're trying to gain weight and you're 150 and your coach wants you to be 175, amazing, bulk. But that's a different approach and a different pathway than if you're trying to bulk for a bodybuilding show and to look amazing and really good. Doesn't mean you can't look good as an athlete over here, like training for performance, but bodybuilding aesthetics, that's a completely different training program. That's a completely different nutrition approach than a bulk or muscle building phase, muscle and weight building phase for a performance-based sport. So it just depends on what you're trying to do.
Beetroot juice.
I'm gonna give that one a 7.5 as well. Not because I don't love it. I love beetroot juice. I just don't think every single athlete needs it all the time. Beetroot juice allows for more oxygen to be delivered to your muscles at once. Your muscles need oxygen in order to work really well. The more oxygen that can get to your muscles at once, the better athlete and the better stamina and endurance that you have. So basically what happens is you drink the beetroot juice. So your blood vessels are like teeny, teeny tiny. The beetroot juice and what's contained in the beetroot juice is going to allow for your blood vessels to be a little bit bigger. Blood vessels carry blood, which carries oxygen. The more blood that flows through the blood vessels at once makes it so more oxygen can be given to your muscles, which then improves your endurance.
Okay, last one. Pre-game candy.
Let's do 5 in the middle. 4. 4.7. 4.7. Candy is full of carbohydrates. So I gave pre-game and pre-practice carbs a 10. I would prefer that you guys get it from more natural sources like applesauce or honey. But if candy is the only thing you got and you got Skittles at the concession stand and you forgot your snack for the day, there's really no difference between Skittles and a sports drink. It's pretty much the same, but the sports drink is optimized for sports and to help your stomach. So I would suggest I'm getting on a tangent now. So I'm gonna give it a 4.7. Not terrible, but probably not the best solution in the world. Now I've gotta address these trends for a reason 'cause there's a lot of noise out there. There's a lot of people telling you guys to do a lot of different things and it can get confusing. If you feel like you need a little bit of guidance, if you feel like you just wanna plan to follow to get you from point A to point B and to hit your goals as fast as possible, that's what we're here for. That's what my job is. Um, we have a coaching group where we do that. I'm gonna put the link in the description. You can check it out. You're gonna get a personalized meal plan, hydration plan. You're gonna know the the supplements that you need to be having to hit the goals that you have.
