Personalised nutrition and supplementation for elite footballers

The challenge

Real Sociedad aimed to ensure the highest levels of wellbeing for its athletes and support them in achieving peak sporting performance.

Over recent years, nutrition has become one of the key pillars underpinning continuous improvements in athlete health, with particular interest in enhancing digestive health. To achieve this, in addition to designing specific nutritional plans, the club partnered with PiLeJe, experts in supplementation. Achieving optimal results requires an in-depth understanding of each player’s metabolic characteristics in order to personalise nutrition effectively.

The solution

A methodology was developed to obtain detailed, individualised information on the players’ nutritional, metabolic and digestive health status, based on comprehensive analyses that assess both micro- and macronutrition.

This approach uses techniques such as lipidomic analysis and gut microbiome profiling, providing detailed insights into each player’s nutritional and metabolic status. This information enables the design of personalised supplementation plans to optimise performance and wellbeing.

The results

• Initial analyses confirm that players’ metabolic, nutritional and digestive status varies significantly throughout the season. This highlights the need for continuous monitoring, allowing diet and supplementation to be adjusted dynamically and potential imbalances that could affect performance to be anticipated.
• The use of specific fatty acids and probiotics has proven key to maintaining metabolic and gut balance. In addition, the combined analysis of clinical, nutritional and molecular data is revealing highly promising correlations that are currently being studied in greater depth.
• Monitoring nearly 100 athletes will generate knowledge that can be applied to other sporting contexts, with the potential to deliver real impact on the health and performance of the athletic population.