Nutrition prescription for climbing athletes on rock or artificial surfaces: are we guessing?

Evidence-based sports nutrition recommendations for well-researched sports (i.e., running, cycling, soccer) are predominantly developed from accumulated clinical trial research. In this type of research athletes undergo diet manipulation and donate tissues in order to help inform best nutrition practices for performance success. However, these experiments are often expensive and logistically complex, with a small number of participants. Thus, observing common dietary practices of athletes are a common first step before employing clinical trial methods. In the sport of climbing (on rock and/or on artificial surfaces) no clinical trials have examined diet manipulation so evidence-based sports nutrition guidance has not yet been developed. Although, observational studies involving the dietary intake of climbers have started to accumulate. This minireview aimed to critique the methodology shortcomings of the observational dietary studies of climbers. Results unveiled 16 observational studies, most with meager methods to assess the dietary intakes of 658 climbers (43% female; ages 10-42y) with varying climbing disciplines and abilities. The majority of studies employed recall methodology with very few assessing dietary intake with weighed food records. Additionally, total energy expenditure was estimated in all studies with only three specifically measuring resting metabolic/energy rate/expenditure with indirect calorimetry. These findings emphasize the need for future nutrition climbing research to focus on gold standard methodology for dietary assessment and energy expenditure simultaneously during different training phase periods. Based on our findings, we propose recommendations to guide future research and practice.