Editorial: Nutrition for team and individual sport athletes

Individual and team sports involve bursts of high-intensity activity interspersed with periods of moderate-lower intensity, but the specific patterns vary across different team sports and individual sports. Although it is challenging to predict the exact demands of any given disciplines, nutritional factors play a crucial role in individual or team sport performance, with growing scientific interest in developing personalized nutrition strategies for athletes. Such personalized approaches are designed to support and enhance health, body composition, exercise performance and recovery by tailoring dietary advice to align with an individual's genetic makeup and lifestyle/training demands. However, when implementing personalized sports nutrition programs or incorporating dietary supplements, it is vital to take an evidence-based approach aligned with acknowledged physiological and biochemical mechanisms. Furthermore, evaluating the safety and efficacy of supplements in specific populations and examining their interactions with other components or nutrients are essential considerations. To tackle these topics, we introduced a special issue titled “Nutrition for Team and Individual Sport Athletes,” which garnered submissions from researchers and academics experts in the field of sports nutrition. This special issue features fifteen high-quality original research articles. In this editorial, we will provide an overview of the key findings from each manuscript.