Assistant Professor Alex Coates is the principal investigator at the “Exercise Physiology and Performance Lab” at Simon Fraser University. Her broad research interests cover applied exercise physiology, with a focus on understanding the impacts of varied exercise stimuli to systems level adaptations. This includes the areas of overtraining, under-fuelling, training adaptation, and monitoring techniques. She joined us to discuss a recent paper titled: “Does Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs) Syndrome Exist?”

(00:00) Introduction

(04:45) David’s Training

(06:56) Alex Yee Running London Marathon

(11:31) Marco Arop’s Half Marathon Efforts

(12:00) Community Shoutouts 

(16:26) Interview Starts

(19:56) Overtraining and Overreaching

(26:25) How Can You Tell If You are Overreaching?  

(30:30) History of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport 

(33:24) Alex’s Personal Experience

(43:38) What Does the Paper in Question Suggest? 

(45:43) The Allostatic Load Model

(48:16) Challenges with the Paper in Question

(54:29) Is There Utility in the Paper? 

(58:21) Disentangling Training and Nutrition Stressors

(64:53) Article Titles in Academia

(71:45) The Difference Between Overreaching and Underfueling

(76:15) The Takeaways from the Paper

(82:25) Outro and Review 

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Links to Alex: 

Lab https://www.exercisephysiologyandperformancelab.com/ 

X - https://x.com/superalex_c 

Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/superalex-c.bsky.social 

Papers on Mentioned on RED-S 

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/57/17/1073 

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/57/17/1098 

Paper on “Does RED-S Exist”:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-024-02108-y 

Paper on Low Energy Availability in Female Endurance Athletes

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39530548/ 

Alex’s Paper on Overreaching and Continuous Glucose Monitors

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38093477/ 

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