For years, skincare companies have marketed cosmetic products by focusing on them containing collagen. The claim was that it was a miracle worker of an ingredient that can ward off wrinkles, hydrate the skin and activate the “fountain of youth”. But there’s demand for collagen, a protein found in the body, from another specific sub-set too: high-performance athletes, chasing not wrinkle-free skin, but perfection on the sporting field.

It’s used particularly by athletes coming back from injury and for those who compete in sports with higher load on the body.

Wayne Lombard, the head of athletic performance for the Indian women’s hockey team, said: “The science is still developing about the use of collagen by athletes. But we know that using it as a supplement probably gives you 1-3% improvement in certain things. Why athletes use collagen is because it helps with joint regeneration in ligaments, meniscus, labrum — all areas of the body that are relatively avascular (having few or no blood vessels which means that there’s not much blood supply there).”

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Supplements not the answer

Besides working with the Indian women’s hockey team, Lombard also helps athletes like badminton player P V Sindhu, decathlete Tejaswin Shankar, long jumper Murali Sreeshankar, and more. The South African, who has made India his second home for a decade now, said that athletes use collagen to strengthen those soft tissues to ensure they are in a “robust state”. 

“This is so they don’t sustain overuse or acute injuries. When someone is injured, supplementing with collagen tends to help with not only regeneration of those soft tissues, but also some sort of help with blood flow,” he added. 

It’s not just Lombard. Over at the Inspire Institute of Sport (IIS) in Vijaynagar — where many of India’s Asian Games-bound athletes are training — the belief is that supplementation is not the answer to everything. The high-performance training centre in Karnataka has enforced a “food first approach”, meaning athletes are encouraged as much as possible to get whatever their body needs from natural food sources rather than supplements. But collagen is used by athletes in sports like rowing, swimming and athletics, particularly the triple jumpers, since these disciplines put a high load on the body.

“Collagen is useful for joint health and pain management. In elite athletes, some regular supplementation, which is timed at specific phases in training or during rehab, will help maintain cartilage density, the cushioning of the joints,” said Samuel Pullinger, head of sport science at IIS Vijaynagar.

‘Golden window’

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Pullinger added that collagen has a “golden window” of when it should be taken and ideally should be paired with vitamin C.

“This is a major issue, unfortunately, in Indian sport. Athletes will see someone use a specific supplement or they will have read that a supplement is used and they will just use it, right? 

Like three times a day. With collagen, there’s a specific time period where it is going to be extremely valuable: around 45 to 60 minutes before training or a rehab session,” said Pullinger. “This timing window is better than some of the other timings because it’s in and around the presence of amino acids in the bloodstream.”

Pullinger also warned against athletes thinking of collagen as some sort of secret ingredient to athletic performance. “Some supplements are extremely valuable. But this is not going to mean that all of a sudden, you will go from finishing 28th to winning the gold medal in your event.”