Which supplements do athletes take and why?

The Quiet Revolution in Elite Sport: How Supplements Became Non-Negotiable

Constantvpn.com – The global dietary supplements market was valued at $209.5 billion (£154 billion) in 2025, and Grand View Research projects it will nearly double to $431.7 billion (£317.4 billion) by 2033. Behind that staggering figure sits a far more intimate question: what exactly are the world’s top competitors putting into their bodies each day, and why? For elite athletes, the answer is rarely a single product. It is a carefully calibrated stack of compounds, each targeting a narrow slice of performance or recovery, layered atop a diet that already covers the vast majority of nutritional requirements.

Prof Graeme Close, professor of human physiology at Liverpool John Moores University, puts the scale of usage bluntly. He notes that published studies suggest up to 90% of athletes use some form of supplementation.

“I often jokingly say that means 10% are lying. The sports teams that I’ve worked in, I think that’s probably closer to 100% of athletes will be taking some form of supplementation.”

Close, who oversaw nutrition for last year’s British and Irish Lions rugby union tour, frames supplements not as a shortcut but as a final adjustment. His view is that athletes who build their plates around whole foods first have already captured the major performance gains. What remains are fractional improvements.

“What we’re talking about is small margins of benefit, where actually these athletes who focus on the food, I think what you often find is that they’ve got the big-ticket items right. So they’re seeing great performance benefits because their overall diet is immaculate. They might be missing out on the one per-centers, but they’ve really nailed the 99 per-centers. And they often do better than those who chase the one per-centers but have not given enough attention to the 99 per-centers.”

The Creatine Story: From Lab Bench to Olympic Locker Room

No supplement better illustrates the trajectory from obscure biochemistry to mainstream shelf presence than creatine. The compound is produced naturally in the kidneys, liver, and pancreas, and it serves as a rapid energy source for skeletal muscle — particularly valuable during short-duration, high-intensity efforts like sprinting or repeated maximal lifts. It occurs in meat and fish, though obtaining meaningful doses from food alone is impractical.

“You would need the best part of a kilogram of raw chicken a day to get the amount of creatine you need,” Close observes, noting that consuming raw poultry carries a genuine food-poisoning risk from pathogenic bacteria.

The compound’s leap into elite sport came in the early 1990s. Two scientists who had spent roughly two decades studying creatine’s physiology shared their accumulated findings with Steve Jennings, founder of the Maxim sports nutrition company that supplied products to the British Olympic team. The result was a product called Ergomax C150, an effervescent creatine tablet distributed to athletes ahead of the 1992 Barcelona Games.

Investigative reporter Doug Gillon learned of what he described as a “secret trial” among British competitors and saw a box of the tablets firsthand. He wrote that if the scientists’ central claim — that creatine could improve explosive athletic performance by one to three percent — held up under scrutiny, then

“sport may never be the same again.”

He was correct. By the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, an estimated 80% of competitors were using creatine in some form. The Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition later described the 1990s creatine breakthrough as having “launched a new era in sports nutrition” and “sparked exploration into other supplements.” Subsequent research has also pointed toward potential cognitive benefits alongside the well-documented physical effects.

Why Athletes Still Reach for the Tub

Today, creatine sits on supermarket shelves worldwide and is tagged relentlessly across social media feeds. Yet its role in an elite athlete’s daily routine is far more nuanced than a casual consumer’s. Supplements in this context correct specific dietary gaps, support muscle hypertrophy and strength, aid recovery between training sessions, or address micronutrient shortfalls that a demanding training schedule makes difficult to close through food alone.

The practical reality is that an elite athlete’s day, from waking to sleep, is structured around optimising both performance output and recovery capacity. Supplements occupy a small but defined niche within that architecture. They are not the foundation; they are, in Close’s phrasing, the “final piece of the jigsaw.”

The Cleanliness Problem

A complicating factor is the strict-liability regime governing most international competition. Athletes bear sole responsibility for every substance that enters their bodies, regardless of intent or knowledge. A contaminated batch, an unlabelled ingredient, or a cross-contaminated product can produce a positive test and end a career. This reality means that supplement selection at the elite level involves third-party testing, batch verification, and close coordination between nutritionists, doctors, and anti-doping authorities.

Australian cyclist Nicole Frain, who competes at the highest level, underscores the naming convention itself as a reminder of purpose and proportion.

“I’m a pretty big believer that they are called sport supplements. They are there [to supplement], not to replace.”

The distinction matters. A supplement, properly understood, fills a gap that food cannot practically close. It does not substitute for training, sleep, hydration, or the macro- and micronutrient architecture of a well-planned diet. The athletes who thrive are those who treat the plate as primary and the tub as secondary — a hierarchy that, paradoxically, is the single most effective performance strategy available.