Science of CSD Sport for peak performance and energy

To see what other sports personalities say about CSD Sport click success stories.

Click Is your sports nutrition right for you? to find out.

Need more facts? Then review our sports resources page.

Are you interested in learning more about sports nutrition?

Click through to SportsCoach21 to find out more about our fantastic new online learning course. It is ideal for sport students, coaches, athletes and parents.

Science of CSD Sport

CSD Sport is based on a line of research that dates back to the early 1900s. A dental practitioner called Weston A Price began to investigate the health and diet of indigenous people throughout the Earth. He found that they all ate vastly different diets but all were healthy when they ate the diet that was natural to them.

More recently, medics such as William D Kelley found that when cancers patients are provided with a natural diet that suits their individual needs, they start to get better. When patients eat a diet that is not suitable for their needs, their condition deteriorates.

Following these discoveries, science has found that we all have a bio-chemically individuality. More recent research by bio-chemists such as Roger J Williams, Frances Pottinger, William Wolcott & George Watson have provided the science by which we can create an assessment of a person’s individual needs and design personal diet plans.

The CSD Sport applies this research and synthesises it with the experiences of practitioners who have been successfully using the techniques with elite and professional athletes for many years.

So how does it work?

Let’s take it back to basics. As humans, why do we eat?
1. To build, repair and re-build our cells and therefore our body.
2. For energy.
3. To help our body function healthily and normally, E.g. to support our immune system etc.

Therefore, we literally are what we eat. Our growth, repair, energy production and normal healthy functions are all dependent on the nutrients that we eat. In sport, the area that we focus on most heavily is probably the production of energy.

How do we produce energy?

Stored energy is broken down and ‘burned’ by converting nutrients to energy using several physiological processes.
Glycolysis.
Beta-oxidation
Citric Acid Cycle (Krebs)
Electron transport chain.
All these produce energy by re-synthesising a compound called ATP in the mitochondria (tiny organelles) in our cells. These processes also produce bi-products - metabolic waste such as lactic acid.

To ‘burn’ carbohydrates, we first need to be able to release the stored fuel from our cells. To do this, we need specific vitamins as well as ‘glycolytic hormones’. We breakdown carbohydrates using the process of glycolysis. This process requires 12 bio-chemical reactions that are dependent on specific ‘glycolytic enzymes’. If our body does not have an abundance of these specific vitamins and the glycolytic hormones & enzymes, we are not going to burn carbohydrates very efficiently.

It is the same with proteins and fats. In order for our body to burn them, we need to be able to release any stores (particularly in the case of fats), with ‘lypolytic’ hormones, and then break them down using a series of bio-chemical reactions that need a specific group of ‘lypolytic’ enzymes. Again, if we don’t have an abundance of these, we don’t break down proteins and fats very efficiently.

What does all this mean? It means that to get optimal energy production we need to play to the strengths of our body. If we are efficient at burning carbs, we should have a diet that is higher in carbs and lower in heavy proteins and fats. On the other hand, if we are inefficient at breaking down carbs, we should focus on eating more proteins and fats for energy.

The biggest myth in sports nutrition is that everyone needs a high proportion of carbohydrates in their diet to give them energy for their performance.

Let’s bust the ‘carb myth’.

Case study Martin Wolstencroft.

Martin is a former professional rugby league player. He now runs a leisure company and runs marathons and half-marathons in his own leisure time. Before completing his assessment, Martin used to eat a lot of starchy foods such as potatoes, rice, pasta, bread and bananas. His assessment revealed that he required a diet that was high in protein and fats. He also discovered that his body functioned at its best with no starchy foods. He now successfully runs marathons and half marathons on a meal of smoked salmon, scrambled eggs, avocados and some leafy greens. It just goes to show that you don’t need huge amounts of starch and carbs to perform in sport.