I can’t say that I’ve even been tempted to load up on phosphate pre-race, but now I know that I should resist this urge, should it ever appear. Down boy! Down!
Joking aside, continued research into what works, and what doesn’t is an important part of improvements in sports science. Glad the team who did the work, put in the effort.
Phosphate is integral to numerous metabolic processes, several of which strongly predict exercise performance (i.e., cardiac function, oxygen transport, and oxidative metabolism). Evidence regarding phosphate loading is limited and equivocal, at least partly because studies have examined sodium phosphate supplements of varied molar mass (e.g., mono/di/tribasic, dodecahydrate), thus delivering highly variable absolute quantities of phosphate.
