“The products I wish I had during my career.”
“The products I wish I had during my career.”
In 2020 I officially retired from professional sport.
My rugby career cut a similar path to athletes the world over – full of challenges to overcome, heartbreaking setbacks and plenty of days where you find yourself at your lowest ebb – with fleeting moments of euphoria.
I made my way into a professional program without much setback as a young player, before a run of consecutive ACL injuries kept me out of the game for over three years.
The root cause being a unique genetic defect in my left knee, with my tibial slope sitting 15% out of alignment from my right leg.
If I was to continue to follow my dream it would mean doing something that no professional rugby player had done before me – undergo a complete tibial osteotomy and a third cruciate ligament reconstruction and return to play.
It was a brutal procedure with an intensive recovery and rehabilitation, but I was committed and determined to get myself back on the field.
That return to rugby came at a cost though, while I was able to play with a newly constructed ACL and left tibia – my knee cartilage was nearly non-existent.
The medical advice for the remainder of my career was simple – ‘enjoy it while it lasts because you don’t have long’. Determined to push on as far as my body would allow, I turned to taking excessive non-steroidal anti inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) to get me there.
Looking to get away from the harmful side effects of anti-inflammatories, together with our medical team, I turned towards micronutrition, namely omega-3 fish oil and curcumin.
This not only extended my career beyond the end-point I’d originally been given, but opened my eyes to the world of micronutrition and its benefits to elite athletic performance.
At the same time, I noticed a lack of education as to how these ingredients could benefit performance and longevity in athletic pursuits.
Elite athletes are spoiled with access to performance nutrition, yet high-performance programs have had to make do with products that don’t meet their needs for years – formulations for mass consumption rather than with elite outcomes in mind.
I believe micronutrition is missing within the sports nutrition market, which has primarily focused on macronutrients – carbs, fats and protein – for too long.
Whilst these are integral to performance, I felt the nutrition puzzle is not that simple. In reality, the way to maintain longevity and performance is much more complex, and micros are arguably the heavy hitters in an optimal functioning body.
With that in mind I joined forces with the best in performance nutrition, Pip Taylor and set about creating Australia’s first and only range of purposefully formulated sports micronutrition products – featuring a potency and ingredient quality unrivalled in the space.
With our combined background in professional sport, Pip and I were always mindful of creating a range that could support the performance of the world’s best, which is why we ensured our products are batch tested for banned substances for safe use by tested athletes.
Now retired from professional rugby, I’m excited about embarking on the next chapter in my life and helping others uncover the benefits of sports micronutrition globally.
This is just the beginning of our story and I can’t wait to share the journey with you.
- Damien Fitzpatrick
FOUNDER & CEO
