After watching some of the early Rugby World Cup games this year, we all know how a percentage increase or decrease in performance can make the difference between winning the World Cup, or crashing out at the first stage.

Now, supplements are not magic, and need to be accompanied by a ‘good’ diet with plenty of nutritionally-dense foods such as kale, spinach, sweet potatoes, buckwheat etc.
Once the basics are in place, here are some supplements to consider:

Whey Protein
Kinetica Sports, have a great range of supplements for rugby. Whey protein is touted as superior post workout or match,  as it can be taken immediately after a conditioning session to help capitalise on an increase in protein synthesis. BCAAs such as leucine can also be taken at this point, to increase protein synthesis even more via the ‘mTor’ pathway.

Creatine
There are buckets full of research about creatine improving performance, it is great for resistance training, and also for games like rugby, which require intermittent bouts of maximum intensity work. Alpha lipoic acid has been show to improve uptake of creatine, so more enters the actual muscle cells.

Caffeine and Acetyl-L-Carnitine
Both use different pathways to enhance endurance and, in the case of caffeine, reaction time.  I would definitely recommend researching acetyl-l-carnitine, it is used both as a sports supplement and a cognitive enhancer (has to be the ‘acetyl’ version as this can cross the blood brain barrier).  Be mindful of dehydration with caffeine supplementation.

I would also consider beta alanine, and HMB for pre-season