Let's focus on good nutrition. In the modern western world food is widely available, but not all available foods are good for the body. We can see that every day. Plenty of people are overweight and are not nourishing their bodies. The athlete's body needs a much higher standard than the average person and that is why the athlete needs good quality food in the right quantity.

Many books have been written what good quality food is. Libraries are filled with these books. But the athlete needs more than that. When the quality food doesn't meet the physical needs, the athlete can think about sports nutrition. Only the matured athlete needs to think about supplements. There is no good reason for teenagers to start with these supplements. Many researches have concluded that there is no significant result in teenage athlete's using supplements for endurance, muscle grow, reaction speed or concentration.

Sports nutrition supplements fill a gap. Sometimes people have physical limitation to what their body can consume. A person's stomach has limitation. When the body needs more than it can consume this gap must be filled. Supplement can fill that gap.

There three important reasons the use supplements.

• The majority of the needed nutrition's need to come from healthy foods. Only a shortage must be filled with supplements.
• To fine tune the performance
• Because it is smart thinking, you don't have to overload your stomach

To know what supplements you need you first know what you're aiming at. For endurance training you will need other supplements then for pure muscle growth. After that goal has been set you can take the next step.

Register what you daily food consumption is for a week or even better several weeks. Then you need to know the training intensity and how many calories you need to complete a training session. Don't forget to add the calories needed for other daily activities.

You know now how much calories you daily need and how much you daily consume. If necessary you need to estimate the extra calories for additional training and add this to the needed calories. The gap what is needed and consumed can be filled with the proper supplements.

There are enough nutritional supplements available in the market. Here are the major categories: protein supplements, vitamin supplements, weight loss products, creatine, glutamine, and protein bars. The important issue is to know your goal and choose the right one(s).

The bottom line here is awareness of one's needs, practices, and goals in terms of health. Without it, no matter how good the market of sports nutrition supplements is, not one product will match well.

It is true that certain nutrients have been found to be commonly beneficial for all but in some cases, there happens to be enough already in the body as they are regularly taken in through food. This will obviously be not evident without proper awareness and information gathering as well.

The one thing that needs to be remembered is that these nutrition supplements are intended to fill in the nutrition gap. They should be used just because every body else is taken them. Taking them and not needing them will only be harmful to the body. Be wise and use them only if needed.