Hire a Catholic missionary as your coach

Most athletes who want to improve their performance do not consult retired geography teachers turned missionaries. But it worked for David Rudisha, and for the other Kenyan athletes who have won 39 medals at the last four Olympics under the tutelage of Colm O’Connell. O’Connell, now 67, came to Kenya from Ireland in 1976. He has no personal background in athletics or formal training as a coach; he started working with athletes as a means of pursuing his vocation as a missionary.

Still, Rudisha and his compatriots have found his advice invaluable – and now Rudisha has retained the 800m gold that he won in London, others will hope to mimic his techniques. They are, O’Connell told the Financial Times earlier this year, “artistic rather than scientific”. “I concentrate more on the person and what they think,” he said. If you can’t find any local missionaries, see if any of your old teachers are hankering for a career change.

Abuse your parents

Listening to a favourite song, donning your shinpads in a particular order, sneaking off for a crafty cigarette: pre-competition superstitions are a commonplace even on the amateur sporting scene. If the superstition bit is ridiculous, there is something to be said for a reliable routine that gets you into the right frame of mind for the contest ahead. Canadian swimmer Santo Condorelli gives his father the finger. He has been doing it since he was eight, and bigger boys were beating him. “[He said:] ‘You’ve got to build your confidence yourself and say eff everybody else that you’re racing,” Santo said. “He said: ‘Every time you’re behind the blocks, give me the finger and I’ll give it back to you.”’ If your own parents don’t tend to spectate at your sporting events, see if your partner would mind you telling them to bog off. Condorelli missed a bronze in the 100m freestyle by 0.03 seconds, it should be noted, so you might want to do it twice just to be sure.

Ingest hornet vomit

Forget Maximuscle: if you really want a competitive edge, you need to think outside the box. When Japanese marathon runner Naoko Takahashi set a new record at Sydney 2000, she was taking an amino acid derived from the larva of the Asian giant hornet. While studies aren’t definitive, one found that the stuff could increase oxygen intake and decrease fat in older women. These hornets can travel at 25mph for up to 60 miles while hunting, so it makes a weird sort of sense. No word on whether anyone has tried cheetah puke.

Cup, or whatever

Michael Phelps is the greatest Olympian of all time. Michael Phelps had weird purple circles on his back. If you could get weird purple circles on your back, perhaps you would be better at yoga. What Phelps and others are doing, as has been widely reported, is cupping: a practice derived from ancient Chinese medicine where a suction cup pulls blood to the surface of the skin, supposedly speeding up recovery. Cool! There is no conclusive evidence that it actually works, though, so feel free to just draw on yourself with marker pen.

Stop waxing …

In their relentless pursuit of the marginal gains that have made them such a dominant force at the velodrome, the British cycling team have given their female athletes slightly peculiar advice: stop getting bikini waxes. Saddle sores had been a persistent problem for the cyclists, and Jane Sterling, a top consultant in vulval health from Cambridge University, told British Cycling that hair removal wasn’t doing them any favours: pubic hair helps move sweat away from the skin and stop the kind of rubbing that was causing problems. It worked like magic: not one of the squad’s elite cyclists has suffered a saddle sore in six months.

… although maybe shave

You should probably tailor your personal grooming to your preferred sport, though. Swimmers are well known for having skin as smooth as that of a baby seal. In fact, this isn’t because it helps reduce resistance, as we all assume – their hi-tech swimming costumes take care of that – but because the process removes dead skin, bringing their nerves closer to the surface and making them feel more in touch with the water for a largely psychological benefit. You wouldn’t want to take this too far, unless you want to feel like the byproduct of one of Buffalo Bill’s skin suits, but you will definitely feel slower in the water with a beard.

Pretend to be in Popeye

“He’s a lovely lad, but when he gets out on the pitch he’s a completely different person”: football’s governing excuse of hooliganistic behaviour can usefully apply in other fields, too. Modern pentathlete Samantha Murray has a novel take on the form: when she trains, she thinks of herself as Olive Oyl. I don’t know that Olive would be my athletic model of choice, but each to their own. Murray’s coach started it: “He said I really reminded him of Olive from Popeye,” she explained . “I’ve got dark hair and usually quite pale skin. The concept of Olive emerged and I just liked the notion of stepping into Olive’s shoes when I compete.” Murray is competing on Thursday; you’ll know she’s ready for action if you spot her stealing her boyfriend’s spinach.

Let robots control your mind

Not for you the tired motivational thuds of Eminem or David Guetta: you are an Olympian, ish, and your taste in music is more … mechanical. Take your inspiration from the US wrestling team, who rely on a site called brain.fm. Brain.fm generates sound using an algorithm and “new spatial audio technologies to produce breathtaking soundscapes that also stimulate the brain”, it says. A plethora of different bots “play” various instruments. The theory is that by aligning the music’s own vibrations with the brain’s natural frequencies (you what?), you can help adjust the subject’s state of mind towards focus, relaxation or sleepiness. The US wrestlers have mostly been using it to get to sleep. Sounds like hogwash, but the evidence is there, and the US wrestling team swears by it, and we’re not arguing with the US wrestling team.

Stay paranoid, stay healthy

You probably haven’t got any significant athletic events coming up in Rio, but if you did, and you were worried about getting sick, you could follow the South Korean squad, who are wearing tracksuits infused with insect repellent in the hope of warding off Zika. There are, similarly, rowers who are bleaching their oars when they come out of the water to avoid contamination. Better safe than sorry – why not try wearing a gas mask at the gym?

Kickstart, don’t false start

Marginal gains do not come at a marginal cost, I’m afraid, and if you are planning to follow Olympians in their scrupulous attention to athletic detail, you may also have to follow them in their frequently desperate hunts for the necessary funds to pay for it. Usain Bolt probably isn’t among them, but there are 140 athletes in Rio who have raised more than $780,000 (£600,000) between them on GoFundMe to cover their costs for the Games. Next time you’re thinking of asking for sponsorship for a fun run, consider framing your effort as the beginning of your four-year cycle towards Tokyo 2020. Hopefully, your new missionary coach will take you on for free.
AB

Eat nothing but peanut butter

Never mind the jostling between nations – peanut butter is winning these Olympics. The US gymnast Simone Biles eats it with a banana before her training sessions. “If you’re allergic to peanut butter, I feel sad for you,” she tweeted two years ago. Her compatriot, the swimmer Ryan Lochte, eats it in the form of Kind bars. Great Britain’s long jumper Greg Rutherford has spoonfuls straight from the jar. Last year, Rutherford even became a peanut butter salesman, promoting Sun-Pat. (Although the picture he tweeted last August doesn’t look like anything from the Sun-Pat range to me …)

Another Olympian to extol the benefits of PB is Biles’s team-mate Aly Raisman. Britain’s frequently winning triathlon team – led by the Brownlee brothers – doesn’t just like peanut butter, it has an “official nut butter supplier”, no less.

What is it about peanut butter that makes it appeal to the world’s top athletes? And will eating it turn you into one? Chris Cashin, a registered dietitian who lectures in sports nutrition at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, has witnessed the peanut butter craze firsthand. “I’ve even got two sons who use gallons of it,” she says. Athletes commonly spread it on carrot or celery sticks, add it to smoothies or eat it in its natural habitat: on toast.

In truth, peanut butter has no magical properties in itself. Generally speaking, it is just ground-up peanuts, plus maybe a bit of oil, salt and sugar – and peanuts are just a lot of fat, carbohydrate, fibre and protein. What is special about this paste, however, is its convenience. Besides mixing easily into sweet and savoury snacks and drinks, it tastes good, requires no preparation, lives for months in your locker without rotting and, crucially, combines all those useful food groups in a very small volume, meaning that athletes can snack on it for energy and protein without getting so full they waddle around the track. The unglamorous truth about peanut butter, as Cashin puts it, is that “it adds a lot of calories without too much bulk”.

Other high-density snacks are, of course, available. Cashin mentions cereal bars and energy balls (which are spherical bars, as far as I can tell) as well as something called “fat bombs”. “That’s a new one,” she says. “It’s a mix of perhaps some coconut oil, coconut and fruit.” There are other nut butters, too, such as almond or cashew, which do a similar job, albeit usually with a little less protein.

Most people already have a more mundane, and cheaper, alternative in their house. “One of the best snacks is actually some cereal and milk,” says Cashin. “Milk has natural whey protein, and carbohydrate, as well as in the cereal. Some athletes will actually refuel with milk. Lots of studies have shown that it is a good source of fuel, post-exercise.”

Of course, if you’re not training fairly seriously, it may be that you are by no means struggling to get enough calories in your diet. Rather, it could be the reverse. In which case, scoffing lots of peanut butter certainly won’t make you any fitter – fatter is a possibility. However, if you are doing a lot of exercise and need a boost from somewhere, here is what’s on offer:

MyProtein, £4.79/kg

Looks like you would buy it in a chemist. No palm oil, salt or sugar. 30g of protein and 579 calories in 100g. Cheap.

Meridian, £5.49/kg

No added salt, sugar or oils. 30g of protein and 579 calories in 100g. Basically identical to MyProtein, but a bit more expensive, so maybe it tastes better?

Biona, £5.99/kg

Organic, if that matters to you. No added sugar or oil, but a bit of salt. 26g of protein and 623 calories in 100g.

WholeEarth, £7/kg

No added sugar, but some salt and “sustainable palm oil”. 28g of protein and 643 calories in 100g.

Sun-Pat, £5/kg

“A natural source of protein,” they say. 25g of it and 611 calories in 100g, to be exact. Also a source of salt, sugar, peanut oil and stabiliser E471.

Skippy, £6.60/kg

Sugar, hydrogenated palm oil, salt – they put the lot in. In the end, you get a spread with 25g of protein and 632 calories in 100g.
LB