For how we live.
An umbrella review of 21 meta-analyses found caffeine helps endurance, strength, power and sprinting. The effect is real but modest, and the useful dose is smaller than many gym pre-workouts pack in.
For everyday exercise, food and water replace what sweat takes. The dangerous salt problem in endurance events is usually too much fluid, not too little sodium — and extra salt does not prevent it.
In 25,241 non-exercisers, three brief daily bursts of vigorous activity tracked with markedly lower mortality. A small trial found stair-climbing 'snacks' raised fitness. The catch: they must be genuinely vigorous.
Meta-analyses put high-intensity intervals roughly 1.2 mL/kg/min ahead of continuous training for peak oxygen uptake. Both produce large gains; the format you will keep doing wins.
Pooled trials show a small boost to oxygen uptake and exercise tolerance from dietary nitrate. The effect shrinks toward zero in the most trained athletes.
A small double-blind trial found a single 5.5 mg/kg dose lifted sprint power for hours, alongside higher noradrenaline and lower perceived effort — but it was 12 people, mostly men.
An umbrella review of 17 meta-analyses found that adding endurance work did not blunt strength, power or hypertrophy compared with lifting alone. Almost none of that data came from highly trained athletes.
The fitness race just closed its biggest season and crowned new world champions in Stockholm. A preprint from a Munich trauma unit gives the sport its first injury numbers, and they are not small.
Trials measuring it are small but consistent: nasal breathing lowers peak oxygen uptake and feels harder at intensity. The interesting findings sit at submaximal effort, not maximal.
WADA's 2026 list adds non-diagnostic carbon monoxide use as prohibited method M1.4. The single-dose haemoglobin test that put the gas in elite endurance sport stays legal — which is the whole difficulty.
Seventy-two runners were sampled before and after the 2024 Boston Marathon. Every marker of kidney and intestinal injury rose, and staying hydrated did not change that.