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13th December 2018
04:45pm GMT
"If one winger ate what the other one does he'd lose weight really quickly. If they switched diets you'd have one that would balloon up and the other would sort of shrivel away. Even when you have a profile of two players that are relatively the same it comes down to more metabolic factors. I don't tend to do anything positionally because you can get individuals that will respond very differently to certain intakes and it just wouldn't work.
"People might think props have to eat 5000 calories and wingers have 3500 calories, it doesn't really work like that. You're trying to figure out what works for each player and you can't just repeat that with the next winger that comes in. You have to do the same process; what's going to work for this individual."
The calorie intake is considerable in rugby and significantly greater than what the average human consumes.
The players have to eat to replenish their energy stores but it's not always feasible to consume calories through food so Tester employs a range of supplements and recovery shakes to try and ensure that players are meeting their counts.
"The lads have to consume calories, they have to get energy on board. It's just not feasible or possible for them to eat all the time.
"The overall volume of food is a real challenge so we use supplements strategically. We use them with players that might need to get energy on board quicker but a lot of the time the lads would use Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard Whey protein around gym sessions and what we're aiming to do is get a protein source in and a supply in and get it in quickly.
"If we get that on board the player's ability to develop muscle is going to be improved. We use it strategically and it comes down to an individual that might need to use a mass gainer to help sustain the calorie intake you need but you can always manipulate the supplement that you're working with.
"Some of our players will use Gold Standard Whey with water, some of them will use it with milk so there's some added calories in there and a lot of the recovery shakes that I would make up would be in a smoothie format - so fruit, milk, some amount of whey in there just to bulk up and get those calories on board - but they'll still be eating a large amount of food, much larger than a normal individual.
"It's how we can support them and make it possible for them to get the energy on board that they need but it's strategic. We don't promote and buy into supplements for the sake of them.
"From my point of view we have a real core number of products that we'd use from Optimum and they really are just to support what the players are doing nutritionally, they're not a replacement. It's in addition to and the lads would be good at recognising that factor."
CJ Stander talks about how Munster's approach to nutrition has improved his game.
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