Exploring nutritional supplement use by Turkish handball players: A pilot study

Handball is popular with high physical, physiological, and psychological demands. In addition to high-intensity movements, handball players must have performance components such as strength, agility, and speed and a suitable aerobic form to cope with high-intensity efforts. An optimal nutrition strategy helps maintain physical and cognitive performance, supports injury prevention, return to play, training adaptations, accelerates, and optimizes recovery processes. It has been stated in the literature that handball players tend to use nutritional supplements (NS) to facilitate the achievement of their nutritional goals. Therefore, studying how handball athletes use NS can offer an important understanding of the factors influencing their success. This study investigates supplement use among Turkish handball players and assessing the factors that shape their supplementation practices.