Football golf equipment ‘spend fortunes on health gimmicks’ regardless of ‘no proof they work’

Fitness expert Dr Claire-Marie Roberts, who helped get Coventry promoted to the Premier League, said players only need proper sleep, nutrition and training

Football teams are being sold dummies by snake-oil salesmen flogging hi-tech fitness gimmicks when there is no evidence they work, according to a leading sports doc.

Dr Claire-Marie Roberts, who helped get Coventry’s players fit for promotion to the Premier League, said there was no data showing cryotherapy, oxygen cans, muscle supporting k-tape or food supplements significantly impact performance.

Yet rich clubs like Manchester City and Chelsea – and the England national team – seem happy to fork out for such tech when all players really need is sleep, proper nutrition and decent training, the medic said.

As Coventry’s performance director she got up to 50 LinkedIn messages a week offering devices, supplements or technology that claimed to produce magical results. One company tried to flog her oxygen in a can.

Roberts – now F1 team McLaren’s director of human performance – said she was shocked how professional football was duped by pseudo-science from coaches misled by snake-oil sellers to players desperate for fitness shortcuts.

“It’s the science-practice gap which is widening in my experience,” she said. “I think it’s getting much worse. There’s so much sparkly marketing behind all these things. It’s bordering on exploitation.

“They’re taking a population that is very susceptible to, ‘How can I hack my performance advantage? How can I shortcut my preparation and recovery?’ Which I don’t think is a great starting point.”

Roberts said some practices commonplace in elite football had little evidence supporting them. “Most clubs have got cryotherapy chambers,” she said.

“Most people cannot articulate to you why they use them because there’s no evidence for them apart from a very slim piece of work that says it might help prevent dementia. “There’s very sketchy evidence on cryotherapy.”

Roberts said such ice chambers could even harm recovery by blunting muscular adaptation. “Sleep and nutrition are your best recovery modalities,” she said. “No amount of putting anybody in a whole-body cryotherapy chamber is going to help them recover more if those two things aren’t taken care of.”

She said players over-rely on supplements, adding: “You’ve got people popping pills not really asking what they’re for. It should always be needs-based. Your athletic performance and recovery is based on sleep quality and nutritional quality and amounts.

“No amount of supplementation will improve a bad diet. But people think it will. We don’t do enough of the basics and think we can shortcut and hack everything.” Kinesiology tape – aka k-tape – also baffled Roberts.

Players from Cristiano Ronaldo to Gareth Bale and David Beckham have been spotted wearing it over the years – often resembling strips of gaffer tape stuck to limbs.

“There’s no evidence kinesiology tape has any impact on injury prevention or performance-related outcomes,” she said. “It gives you a bit of proprioception – maybe you feel like someone has done something – but in any environment I’ve worked in you’d never see anyone wearing k-tape. It’s a big white elephant.

“If an athlete has dislocated their shoulder you should strap it. Strapping is different. It provides an element of external support that can provide minimal protection to the joint and reminds the person they’ve got a problem. It’s a risk-mitigation strategy. It’s not hugely successful, but you’d do it rather than not do it. K-tape is a placebo.”

Roberts said she used an evidence-based scientific approach at Coventry. But bigger clubs were open to gimmicks and had cash to burn on them. “People passively suck these things up,” she said.

“Because England or Manchester City or Chelsea, who have all the resources under the sun, have got this there’s a misappropriation of confidence and understanding of the scientific basis or evidence. It’s powerful in driving behaviour. But it’s driving the wrong behaviour.”

Roberts, a former swimmer who missed the 1996 Atlanta Olympics owing to injury, said football was ‘more susceptible to it than any other sport’ because the ‘stakes are higher’ and many clubs are ‘anti-intellectual’. Until it puts science at the centre of decision-making and employs qualified staff to scrutinise claims the problem will get worse.

“We think we can accelerate to an outcome without putting the hard yards in – the basic things, diet and sleep and the quality of your training,” she said. “Football in general is very anti-intellectual and it has been for a long time. There are a few clubs that do it well but the majority don’t. The game is definitely anti-science. There’s a reason for that. There isn’t a critical mass of people that are applying critical thought to situations.”