What Supplements Are Pro Cyclists ACTUALLY Using In 2026

There is a big difference between the supplements that you're being sold on Instagram and TikTok versus the supplements that pro cyclists are actually currently taking. How do I know that? Because I've been asking some of the nutritionists who are advising the fastest pro riders on the planet. The question is, what actually are they taking? Is it worth you spending your hard-earned cash on the same products? Let's find out. There's always one or two athletes that are like, I feel amazing on this and this makes a difference. It's something that can help improve the recovery because you are going to relax that muscle and improve the sleep quality. I've used it with endurance athletes for quite some time now. If you use it correctly, like a low dose over a longer period of time, I think you can still see the benefits, but you don't have that negative effect. We know from our recent videos here at GCN just how many of you are really interested in ergogenic aids and supplements. The problem can be trying to decipher which ones actually work and which are pure snake oil. I've been speaking to the experts and the first thing I wanted to find out are which supplements actually help you perform better and ride a bike faster. After all, that is what pro cyclists are paid very decent money to do. The first person I spoke to was Gorka Prieto-Delva. He is the Chief Sports Nutritionist at UAE Team Emirates XRG and he's been there since 2020. As such, he has been one of the people responsible for the fueling and supplement strategy of Tadej Pogacar and his teammates. The main supplements are the carbohydrates. We have different type of gels, bars, isolate drinks. Those are the main supplements that they are using during the training and during the racing as well. They are using caffeine as well during the stage. It depends on the rider, but they are using caffeine to have that last shot to do the last effort. Before, some of them, they are using B-carb, sodium bicarbonate. It's quite common in cycling. What is the timing of the caffeine intake pre-race, during the race? Are they ever taking caffeine during a training ride or is it only reserved for competition? No, they only take when they're competing. The timing is always 45, 50 minutes before taking it because you're going to achieve the peak of the caffeine after 45, 50 minutes. So it depends on the goal that this particular rider in that case has. If you need to pull in the beginning, maybe this rider should take the caffeine in the beginning of the race and this rider just in the end of the competition because you want the highest performance for the last part of the stage and not in the beginning. So it depends a bit on the goal that you have as a rider. Also, just to have an aerogenic effect, it depends a bit, but at least all the study says between 3 to 6 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight. We try to keep things quite basic and very evidence-based within the team and that actually limits the amount of options that we do have. For us, it's primarily caffeine and then also sometimes sodium bicarbonate. In terms of the B-carb, is that something that riders are taking most races or again just specifically for the ones they really want to peak for? Again, it's something that they really want to peak for and we've got to consider some of the side effects of sodium bicarbonate. Sometimes we see an increase in body weight following sodium bicarbonate ingestion. Again, it's about looking at what the bigger picture for that rider is and choosing specific times within the race or within the stage race, shall we say. Teaching is an obvious one. What are the other obvious ones? There's not really any obvious ones, shall we say. Let's say that a time trial is probably the most consistent one, but if a rider is maybe wanting to go out into a breakaway or look for that breakaway wind, then that's another consideration. In what form do your riders take the B-carb? Some prefer the capsules, just normal capsules. Some will prefer mini tablets in a carbohydrate gel. Then on the bike, obviously, we're a little bit more limited in terms of the logistics where capsules are the main go-to. I'm going to ask the same thing about the caffeine, actually. What form is that taken in? Different forms, really. We have caffeine contained within gels. We have capsules. We also have caffeine shots. Then, of course, we have Red Bull available as well. The fueling in cycling has changed a lot in the past six years, particularly where six or seven years ago, we were struggling to get people to eat 60, 70, 80 grams of carbs an hour. Now, we're more commonly seeing athletes having that 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, 120, and the odd athlete is having more than 110, more than 120. Typically, I'm recommending my riders to have around 100 to 110 grams an hour in races, but it really does depend on the race itself. An easier stage race, if it's really easy, it will depend on the role as well. If an athlete is perhaps more there as a support rider and they're not actively having to do a lot of hard work, they may not be burning as much energy and may not need to feel quite so hard as the domestiques who are sitting at the front in the headwind, just burning all their matches left, right, and center to ensure that the climbers or the sprinters get to the end of the stage when we need them to be able to start working. But typically, I'm recommending most of them fuel about 100 to 110 grams an hour in whatever way works best for them. Some it's drinks, some of them it's gels, some of them it's bars. It's very unique sports nutrition. It's not a one-size-fits-all. I was going to talk to you about ketones as well. There was a hot topic for many years, not much talk about them currently, but I understand some teams still do use them. What's your personal opinion on ketones and what's the ethos with the riders that you work with? Personally, I'm not a huge fan. I found the research, when I read into the research and what it's doing and the time point that people are using, there is some evidence that it may be beneficial for recovery. Typically, I'll see people wanting to use it straight away after the race, which the whole point of ketones is it compromises how our body uses carbs as fuel. If you're taking something like that at a time point, you're trying to recover and what are we trying to achieve immediately after race? We want to get the carbs into our glycogen stores to help rebuild that. If you're taking something that blocks that and suppress that for hours, that potentially could be compromising your recovery. There's always one or two athletes that are like, I feel amazing on this and this makes a difference. They might use it strategically, perhaps in altitude training camp or in a really hard training racing block. Typically, we'd use it a couple of hours after they've raced in the evening. I also find that most riders, they take it and they feel horrific on it. The taste is vile. Again, it's very, very individual. Personally, it's not something that I would recommend highly or prioritize people to spend their money on. The evidence hasn't justified the hype. The evidence and the studies are quite inconsistent and messy, shall we say. They seem to have taken a bit of a shotgun approach where we're going to just take ketones and see under different conditions and see if they do have any sort of effect. Obviously, they were popular a few years ago and then became a little bit less popular and seem to come back every now and again, but our stance is that we don't include them in our supplement strategy. Fueling with an absurd number of carbohydrates per hour is still the biggest consideration for all pro cyclists. Bicarb is another one that can be taken by certain riders in certain races, but caffeine is another really big one. That seems to be taken by most pro cyclists, certainly in races where they want to be at their best. What about recovery from all of those efforts? How do professional cyclists ensure they're ready to be at their best day after day in both racing and training? The red bottles that we see pretty much every rider as they cross the line down at the end of a stage or a race, what is in that bottle and what's it doing? I think it's common knowledge now that those red bottles contain tart cherry juice. This is primarily to have an anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effect. With the tart cherry, I don't think necessarily people need to be taking it the split second they finish the stage, but from a convenience time point, it's often a way that we can get it in and ensure that somebody is getting in it. A lot of them do have extra sugar in them. They're getting usually at least 30 grams of carbs from the cherry juice, whether it's in a sachet or it's in the liquid format. I would only be using that in a race format. I wouldn't be using it in training because it could potentially be hampering adaptations that we want from a training perspective. After the tart cherry juice, what's the next thing that you like to see your riders consuming after a hard race or stage? Maybe it's not the most sexy answer, shall we say, but we just primarily focus on food, making sure that we get the right amount of carbohydrates over the correct timing over the next three to four hours because obviously there's a bit of a limited time between finishing the stage, then having dinner, maybe an evening snack, and then basically going to bed, especially if the stage finishes quite late. Again, we primarily focus on, or shall we say, we solely focus on getting the correct amount of macronutrients in terms of carbohydrate, protein, and water. What's the advantage of doing that through whole food versus getting that correct ratio between carbs and protein in a drink? Naturally, when you use whole food, shall we say, you're not just getting the specific nutrient, you're not just getting carbohydrate, you're also getting a wide range of vitamins and minerals as well. Again, that's super important to us as a team to focus on this food first approach, not necessarily food only because there are some times where supplements can bridge that gap. Like I said, we primarily focus on getting the right amount of food. My first priority is always carbs because the things we want to think about is, first of all, carbohydrate because after a stage race, after these races, then we've used a lot of your glycogen stores. Especially if you've got multiple days in a row, we want to kickstart that recovery. A key thing that I think a lot of cyclists miss is timing. I think people often see and look at calories like, as long as I've got my macros, I'm good. I'm like, no. What you eat immediately after exercise is not the same through three, four, five, six hours. Even on paper, it should be the way your body metabolizes it and uses it. How aggressive we want to be with recovery depends on what's coming afterwards. If a race, for example, like Peru Bay on the weekend, if these riders, they're not racing the next day, they might have a day off and they don't have to be as aggressive with the recovery as they would be if they're going to the Giro or the Vuelta or the Tour and they've got another 120, 150, 3,000 meters of climbing that they need to be prepared for. Number one thing is always carbs. That'd be my priority. Second, protein to repair with muscles. First and foremost, I'd be looking at carbohydrates and fluid as well, because if you're sweating a lot out, we may not be able to drink enough to replace our sweat losses. Being able to rehydrate for the next day is going to help how you feel, is going to help with, again, the time to recover, the time to... From a performance perspective, fluid intake or dehydration can impair our performance. When we're racing, we want fast recovery. We don't want them to be feeling DOMS and having sore muscles and aches. We want them to be sleeping well and those things can help support that, but I'm always very skeptical when it comes to supplements, because if you go and read a lot of the studies, typically what they've done is they've just taken all antioxidants out of the diet and then they give them a supplement and they're like, ta-da, it makes a difference. I'm like, yeah, but what happens if they just had their normal diet and then you gave them a supplement? Is it still having quite as much of the same effect? Perhaps not, but ultimately the biggest priority is carbohydrate to refuel and then I'd start with liquids because typically they're not very hungry after they finish a stage and then you get on the bus, have a shower, get cleaned up and then have a solid meal to help follow on with that recovery process. Sticking with the caffeine side of things, is there any negative effects on recovery in terms of sleep that evening? Because if, for example, you're taking it half an hour before you want to be at your peak as a GC rider, in local time, that's probably going to be somewhere around 4.30 in the afternoon, which is not that far before bedtime. Is that an issue? If so, how do you mitigate the negative effects on sleep and recovery? Yeah, it could be an issue. As you said, it's quite close from when you finish a stage at five, maybe up to when you travel to sleep. That's why the amount of caffeine that you must take during the race also needs to be countered. So after you can take melatonin, that you can improve a bit the sleep quality before sleep. You can take magnesium to relax a bit the muscle and also to improve the sleep quality. So you can take some supplements to try to improve it as well. You will struggle if you take sodium. The one that we are using is magnesium glycinate, I think in English. It's something that can help improve the recovery because you are going to relax that muscle and improve the sleep quality as a good side effect of relaxing that muscle. Recovery is obviously a massive consideration for all pro riders and teams. That, as you heard, includes ensuring that they get the best quality sleep they can each night. The other thing you want to avoid at all costs as an athlete is getting sick. Easier said than done when you're pushing your body close to its limits day after day, sometimes week after week. What supplements are they taking to give themselves the best chance of staying healthy? It's not so much of a difficult topic, but it's an interesting topic, shall we say, because there's not really much you can do from an evidence base to boost or protect that immune system. Obviously, making sure that you're getting adequate energy day in and day out to support that training load is the primary importance. But then once they get sick, that's where there's a little bit of evidence to say with vitamin C and probiotics can maybe reduce the intensity or the duration of that sickness. Outside of supplementation, we just make sure the riders understand the importance of washing their hands, avoiding large crowds, sometimes using masks, for example. But effectively, it's fundamental just to get the basics of nutrition right, so plenty of fruits, plenty of vegetables, keeping on top of their hydration. But it's not necessarily targeted supplementation to protect the immune system, shall we say. Yeah, I rarely recommend a multivitamin supplement because often, when I look at what people are taking, whether it's supplements, it's drinks, it's bars, it's gels, I'll find there's usually five or six different sources of everything at 100% of the RDI recommended daily allowance or amount they should be having. So it's common for me to see people taking triple doses of certain vitamins. And mostly, I would only be supplementing if there's a clear need or demand. There's certain time points that we might be more prone to, for example, at altitude camps, more prone to be recommending the iron, taking iron for about a month. But the amount that I would give, I would be basing it upon their blood values. And so the same thing goes with vitamin D. There's a lot of supplements that people just take willy-nilly without and be like, oh, it's got to be good for me. It's helping my bone health, for example. I was talking to an athlete this week about vitamin D and they're in the Middle East. And you think that in the Middle East, you get a lot of sunshine, but you're constantly indoors and you're constantly having sunscreen on you. So you actually get very little sun exposure. And so if you have little sun exposure, you're probably going to potentially have a deficiency in vitamin D and the same thing for the Northern Hemisphere in winter. So there's times that we might supplement strategically, but a lot of supplements, taking it in a supplement form can override natural processes to eliminate things so that we don't get to toxic set of levels. And we've seen that happen in vitamin D with bone, that having too much of something isn't always a good thing. So I rarely just recommend blanket. Everyone needs to take this. I would look at their whole scenario and case and food history and diet and all that sort of stuff. So we've covered fueling, other supplements to help you go faster on the bike, supplements for recovery, and indeed supplements to help you stay healthy. But one that I was really keen to find out more on was creatine. This has been around for decades, but for the longest time, endurance athletes tended to avoid it, partly because of the risk of putting unwanted weight on with it, partly because it was seen as a supplement for bodybuilders and for short effort rather than the endurance sport, which is cycling. But I'm hearing more and more that pro cyclists are taking creatine now. I wanted to find out if that's the case, and if so, why they're taking it. I've got riders that I recommend creatine to and who use it and who will actively say, I feel so much better on creatine, particularly for sprinting. So typically, it's the classics riders, the sprinters, or perhaps the domestiques, the women who are out the front just burning all their mattress up for the climbers to get to the final sort of climb. They're typically the riders that are the ones that like using creatine and benefit from it. As you said, the weight issue has been a big reason why a lot of athletes have historically avoided using creatine, and some people are more sensitive than others. I actually tested this personally myself last year. I think I was taking a big dose, like 20 grams is typically your loading dose, but we can load in different ways. So we might take a smaller dose for a longer period of time, or we can take a bigger dose and then go down to a maintenance. And I took it, and for me, it had no impact on my weight at all, because I was just curious to see. But I also know athletes and women, female athletes who are probably 10, 15, 20 kilos lighter than me, who they take a smaller dose and they blow up and they get this extra weight. So I it is very individual. And I think from a health perspective, there's some really interesting research with creatine. Women, it's beneficial from the perspective of a lot of women maybe aren't getting enough protein in their diet, or vegetarians also tend to benefit more from creatine use. So it's how beneficial it is, is always relative to what's your normal diet, what you're typically eating on a day by day sort of basis. But there was a study that was presented at a conference I went to last year that was suggesting that creatine may be beneficial from a concussion perspective. And obviously in cycling, we don't want people to be crashing, but there are crashes just naturally, it's the nature of the sport. And there was some evidence that it could be protective for the brain in that environment. And so if athletes are happy and to use it, then there's definitely no harm in that. Yeah, I think creatine maybe gets a bit of a bad reputation amongst endurance athletes. And I think that's primarily just to the fear of putting on weight, which isn't so much of a concern for some types of rider, but when it comes to our GC and climbers, then it is a bit more of a worry. For me, that worry is a little bit too much. I've used it with endurance athletes for quite some time now, and if you use it correctly, so more of a low dose over a longer period of time, I think you can still see the benefits, but you don't have that negative effect of weight increase. So creatine is not something that all athletes use. It's maybe periodized at certain periods of the year. Maybe if an athlete is recovering from an injury and we want to maybe protect that muscle tissue, perhaps we can introduce creatine there. Or when the athlete is going through a muscle hypertrophy phase to build some strength and power in the gym, again, that's where we maybe periodize that creatine intake for a few weeks beforehand during that block, and then discuss with the coach and with the athlete whether or not we want to remove that creatine or continue with it. And beyond the muscle atrophy and protecting the amount of muscle you've already got, what other benefits does creatine offer to an endurance athlete, or I guess more specifically, a cyclist where it's not a steady state, even though it is many hours each day? Yeah. Creatine is stored in the muscle as phosphocreatine, and we know that this is primary energy source for the first five to 15 seconds of exercise. So if you think about these really punchy, hard accelerations, that's where creatine could be beneficial. So obviously for track cyclists, it makes more sense, but then if you think to the sort of GC or stage race or classics rider, those sort of short, punchy, hard accelerations, that's where creatine could potentially play a benefit. The riders, they take when, for example, they are doing strength training, like gym training sessions to improve the muscle mass, to improve that strength capacity. Also during the bike, when they have strength training on the bike, they can take a squat. In the past, you were doing a load of 23 grams during one week, and after you were taking five grams per day until, I don't know, until you forget. Right now, they are not doing that loads because as you said, it's quite common to gain weight, because you can even store more glycogen. As you know, to store one molecule of glycogen, you need between 2.8 and 3 liters of water. So that's why people increase their weight, because they have more water retention, because they increase their glycogen levels. So it's something to take into account if you are doing a GC or a Grand Tour, to not increase too much your body weight. That's why you need to take into account the sodium intake, the creatine intake, etc. But it could be an option, for example, for sprinters that they train during all the weeks. I mean, strength training, no? To take it during the week or depending on the weight that they gain, like acute during that strength training session. But for example, on the TTs, short TTs, quite explosive TTs, also could be an option just to take it before the TT to improve it. Then that's also for gripping levels that are going to make you faster. So creatine is definitely being taken by pro riders, but not all of them, and not all of the time. Next up, I wanted to find out if there's any other supplements that pro riders are regularly taking. Beta-alanine, omega-3s, pre and post-biotics, for example. There's a few supplements that a lot of riders will have. I mean, it varies from rider to rider, because some of them, for example, like beetroot, there's a lot of riders that are using beetroot, it can be helpful for endurance exercise, for blood flow, and for sub-max intensity efforts. But if they have too much, it can also cause gut issues. So typically, if you're taking nitrates, it's usually beetroot, so it's another bright red. And then you'll usually have weed that's pink in that format. That's not abnormal. So usually, probably something like that would take maybe two or three hours before the race. And if you're taking beta-alanine for a sprinting, it would probably take that before a race. Same thing with the bicarb. The timing of the bicarb always comes back to how long is your stage, how long is your race, when do you want it to peak for? And the other thing to think about is the format that you're using. So for example, if there's tablets, there's the Morton, there's a whole bunch of different ways that we can take bicarb, and they will impact how quickly it's available in the bloodstream and how much you feel it. Sometimes I'll see athletes tell me that, when I take the tablets, for example, I really feel it. I feel like it's working. And whereas maybe the Morton, I know it's working, but I don't feel it working in the same way. And the same thing goes for beta-alanine, where typically, realistically, we'd be recommending people split the doses up throughout the day. But a lot of times, people just take it as one mass dose because they get the tingles, and then it feels like it's working, even though it's not actually any different from splitting it. And you said the beta-alanine, it tends to be reserved for the sprinter type ride, as opposed to a mountain stage, for example. Yeah, typically. But I mean, we'll have riders that will be using it all the time. So the thing is with beta-alanine, that's one that we would load for, and we wouldn't just take it one day. One day, there's not much evidence for it to having much of an impact. So the beta-alanine, you take it daily for a month, typically, before you want it to be available. And then, whereas the bicarb, we just take it once, or once or twice, specifically, at the time point that we need, or that we're looking for it to be working for us. You work, obviously, for UAE ADQ, which, as such, means that you're working with some of the top female professional cyclists. Are there any different considerations for female pros versus males when it comes to supplements, specifically? Not specifically when it comes to supplements. I mean, they may need more iron. That's probably the main thing they might need more of. But there's not many supplements that I would specifically recommend differently. But I just find the priority of fueling, and recovery, and eating enough for energy training demands is a higher priority for women compared to men. I think men can get away with under-fueling, and it's still causing damage. It's still compromising performance for the men, because I've worked with a lot of pro-male cyclists over the years as well. But women, under-fueling has a negative impact on health and performance a lot sooner. And those consequences can last a lot longer than it does with the men. And so, I find both with men and women, there's often a lot of underlying disorder eating, not always, but sometimes to sort of work through. But it's encouraging people to fuel more for their health as well as their performance, because sometimes you can see athletes who are under-fueling, and at the moment, they're performing really well. But you can see the trajectory of where they're going if they don't course correct. And it's really hard to convince someone to eat more and they're like, no, no, no, I don't need it. I don't need it. And that's probably one of the hardest parts of my job sometimes. Antioxidants to improve that oxidation, they are taking as well, the omega-3 supplements as anti-inflammatory supplement. As you know, we have NLV as a sponsor, and the quality of the omega-3 is quite high. That's another point just to take into account that you need to check the amount of omega-3 that has the pill. So taking daily is something that I recommend the athletes of the team, because it's quite important. We encourage them to take a few supplements on a daily basis just to cover health, shall we say, something like a multivitamin, fish oil and probiotic. But it's not something that is specifically just ahead of a particular race. It's more of a day-to-day intake to support that health, shall we say. Finally, I wanted to ask the experts, what is the best bang for your buck when it comes to buying supplements as a keen amateur cyclist? What are the three supplements that will undoubtedly help you be better without breaking the bank? Supplements are usually the thing that people gravitate to first, and it's like the sprinkles and the cake. Whereas a supplement if you aren't fueling enough is not going to do very much. So it's kind of like it's enhancing everything. But probably the supplements that I'd recommend the most to my athletes is the sodium bicarb and the creatine and perhaps the beetroot. They're probably the three that I would recommend the most to the athletes, because as well as my pro athletes, I have a lot of amateur riders that might be training 10, 15, 20 hours a week alongside a full-time job and family and real life. So the supplements can definitely support, but they're only going to go so far. And the biggest bang for your buck is actually going to be from getting on top of your fueling, your everyday nutrition, your training nutrition, your recovery and your timing. That will have so much bigger benefit over the supplements. That would be my first approach for sure. The first should be carbohydrates. You have to eat enough carbohydrates during the training or during the competition because it's quite common to see amateur cyclists not eating enough. When we are speaking about professionals, it's just opposite. They eat a lot because they are used to it. It's something that you need to train. But it's quite common to speak with an amateur rider that they fuel with 60, 40 grams per hour and they cannot reach high amounts. And to improve your recovery, it would be great to eat enough carbohydrates during the ride to improve after the recovery as well. So that should be my main supplement, the carbohydrates. You have gels, bars, it doesn't matter. If it's an isotonic drink, that's the main one. Second one, it depends. I would say the recovery shake. After a big effort, after a long ride, maybe if you don't have appetite, it could be a good idea to take a recovery shake straight after. Like maltodextrin, fructose and protein. Like this, we are going to start replenishing that glycogen that we are using during the ride and we are going to improve that recovery straight after. And we are going to improve that muscle damage with the protein as well. And the third one, I would say the creatine. That is quite common. We have a lot of studies to improve the strength training and also to improve your cognitive level. This is quite important. And just to try to keep the muscle because it's quite important to keep the muscle. Because from 30s, if we don't train it, we are going to start losing it. So that would be my third supplement because it's quite important, I think, the creatine. For an endurance athlete, carbohydrate would be the first one. Then I would probably say caffeine. And then for the third one, probably beta alanine or sodium bicarbonate. Or both preferably. We can maybe lump them two together. I will finish by saying a huge thank you to Gorka, Gemma and Stephen for taking the time to speak to us about what cyclists are currently using in terms of supplements. I hope you found it as interesting to watch as I did speak to them myself. I'm going to ask you now what your experience has been in taking supplements for health and performance. Let me know in the comment section down below and I will see you soon.