Review of Nutrition•pro Supplements: What Really Makes a Difference

A few weeks ago, we’d already had a chance to check out Nutrition•pro. But we hadn’t yet put it to the test in our own bodies. In July, after a lengthy conversation with Brian Gaillard, the brand’s founder, we published an analysis on 3bikes dedicated to so-called “weight-loss” supplements. The goal wasn’t to hand out good or bad grades, but to return to something that’s sometimes sorely lacking in the world of supplementation: physiology.

Our conclusion was quite simple: a supplement cannot make up for a poor diet, a poorly structured workout, or insufficient sleep. And above all, no product possesses the magical power that certain marketing campaigns would like to attribute to it.

This discussion, however, made us want to take things further. Because debunking oversimplifications is one thing; verifying what intelligently chosen supplements can offer an athlete who trains hard is quite another. Nutrition•pro therefore provided us with four products: Creapure® Creatine, Magnesium+, Omegavie® Omega-3, and NOVAGEN®, its marine tripeptide collagen.

And this time, we decided to do what we love most at 3bikes: take our time. One month. Not to look for four miracles. But to observe four small levers.

The protocol: don’t change anything… except the supplements

This is probably the most important part of this test. For four weeks, we deliberately didn’t make any drastic changes to our diet to “help” the products work. The same logic applied to our training.

Road biking, gravel biking, running, high-intensity workouts, endurance rides, and competitions continued to fill our weeks. The goal was obviously not to conduct a clinical study. An individual test will never allow us to scientifically isolate the effect of a supplement from sleep, training load, diet, or simply normal fluctuations in fitness.

So we focused on other factors: digestive tolerance, ease of use, muscle sensations, recovery, overall how we felt the day after hard workouts, and the practical benefits of each product for a cyclist. We followed one rule: stick to the recommended doses rather than playing amateur chemist.

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Creatine: Probably the Most Misunderstood Supplement Among Cyclists

Let’s start with the one that’s likely to raise a few eyebrows in the peloton. Creatine? For a cyclist? In the collective imagination, it’s still more associated with the weight room than with cycling. Yet that overlooks one key fact: a cycling race is almost never a perfectly linear endurance event.

A surge, a climb above the threshold, an attack, a sprint, thirty seconds to close a gap… Modern cycling is full of brief, intense bursts of effort layered over several hours of aerobic work. That’s precisely where creatine comes into play.

We used Creapure® creatine monohydrate at a dose of 3 g per day—the three capsules recommended by Nutrition•pro. The brand advises taking one or two capsules after exercise. In practice, we mainly stuck to a much simpler rule: consistency over timing.

Three grams. Every day. Whether you’re training or resting. And that might be our first piece of advice: there’s no need to think of creatine as a booster to take twenty minutes before riding. It works by gradually saturating your muscle stores. What matters, therefore, is what you do over several weeks—much more than the time on your watch when you take the capsules.

In practice, don’t expect to suddenly feel an extra 20 watts. Our experience was much more subtle: a greater ability to repeat explosive efforts as fatigue sets in, especially during sessions involving multiple accelerations.

This is consistent with current understanding: for endurance athletes, creatine seems most beneficial when the workout involves repeated sprints or high-intensity intervals, and much less so for directly improving sustained aerobic performance over long periods. In other words: it doesn’t transform your FTP. However, it can be beneficial when you need to put out 600 watts after already spending several hours at 200. And in cycling, that happens quite often.

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Magnesium+: the one you might notice most when it’s missing

Second pill bottle, different approach. Magnesium+ combines, among other ingredients, MagShape® microencapsulated magnesium, magnesium malate, taurine, and vitamin B6. The brand recommends four capsules per day, with the option to split the doses. That’s what we did: two earlier in the day, two in the evening. Why?

Because magnesium isn’t a product designed to directly boost performance on Sunday morning. It plays a key role in normal muscle function and energy metabolism, and supplementation makes the most sense when dietary intake is insufficient.

Over the course of a month, our best feedback paradoxically concerns something that’s hard to quantify: the feeling of better handling the accumulation of daily demands, with muscle recovery that feels consistent and good digestive tolerance. No spectacular sensations. And that’s exactly what we appreciated.

Our advice, therefore, is not to treat magnesium as an anti-cramp medication taken in the car before a race. That’s not what it’s for. If you do use it, it’s best to incorporate it into a daily routine and assess its benefits over several weeks, especially during periods of high training volume.

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Omega-3: The Unsung Hero

If we had to pick the least spectacular product in this test, it would probably be this one. And that’s absolutely not a criticism. Omegavie® Omega-3 provides 1,200 mg of omega-3 per four daily capsules, including 640 mg of EPA and 440 mg of DHA. We took two capsules in the morning and two at dinner, ideally with a meal. The benefit here is much more long-term than immediate. No one wakes up after taking three fish oil capsules to miraculously find that their legs have recovered.

On the other hand, after several weeks of training, we appreciated the overall sense of consistency in recovery, though we obviously couldn’t attribute this solely to omega-3s. And that’s precisely where science gets interesting. A recent meta-analysis of 35 trials involving 1,211 trained athletes found a particularly interesting benefit of omega-3s on recovery parameters, although this obviously doesn’t mean they’re a magic potion.

Our advice is therefore simple: prioritize diet over supplementation. Someone who regularly eats sardines, mackerel, salmon, and other fatty fish won’t necessarily benefit as much from supplementation as someone who rarely eats them. A supplement should fill a need—not create one to justify its existence.

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NOVAGEN: The Most Intriguing Option for Endurance Athletes

Then there’s the one that perhaps interests us the most in the long term—not to gain watts, but to keep producing them. NOVAGEN® provides 5 g of Naticol® x3Peptide marine collagen and 120 mg of vitamin C daily. Its unique feature lies in its very low-molecular-weight tripeptides.

For cyclists who occasionally incorporate running, strength training, or gravel riding into their routine, this becomes an interesting consideration. Because with all the talk of VO2max, FTP, and glycogen, we sometimes forget that performance also depends on tendons, joints, and connective tissues that are asked to repeat thousands of movements.

We took a daily dose, simply mixed with water. The powder mixes easily, and its very mild taste makes it much easier to stick with the regimen. Over four weeks, it would be difficult—and dishonest—to claim that we’ve “strengthened our tendons.” On the other hand, the overall sense of well-being after weeks of cycling, running, and high-intensity training struck us as noteworthy—enough, at any rate, to make us want to extend the experiment.

Regarding timing, sports literature suggests a potential benefit to consuming collagen peptides around the time of exercise that places stress on connective tissues. In our use, we therefore gradually shifted toward taking it about an hour before a running session, strength training, or a particularly demanding workout.

With one important caveat: sports protocols often recommend doses of 10 to 15 g of standard hydrolyzed collagen. NOVAGEN®, however, is based on a different form, Naticol® x3Peptide, consisting of tripeptides with a very low molecular weight—around 300 daltons, according to the manufacturer’s technical data. The brand thus claims improved absorption, allowing for lower doses; the clinical study conducted on this active ingredient was carried out using 2.5 g per day. NOVAGEN® provides 5 g.

However, this does not mean that results from one protocol can automatically be applied to another: the form of collagen, dosage, study population, and objective must all be taken into account. And this nuance is precisely what, in our view, distinguishes sound advice from a marketing slogan.

So, morning or evening? Our simplest routine

After a bit of trial and error, we finally settled on a routine that’s extremely easy to stick to.

• At breakfast: 2 Omega-3 + 2 Magnesium+.
• Around your workout: 3 g of creatine every day, with one to two capsules after your workout as recommended by the brand, but without getting too hung up on the timing.
• About an hour before a session that puts a lot of strain on the tissues: 5 g of NOVAGEN.
• At dinner: the remaining 2 Omega-3 + 2 Magnesium+ capsules.

And on rest days? Keep taking them.

This is probably the most common mistake with this type of supplementation: thinking of it like an energy gel. These products aren’t meant to produce an immediate effect on the day you take them. Their effectiveness comes from consistency.

This month has taught us one thing above all else

We started this test with four jars. We’re finishing it with a much simpler idea. The most beneficial supplementation is probably not the one you feel the most. You can sometimes gauge the effect of a gel within thirty minutes. An energy drink within a few hours. These four products operate on a different timeframe.

They work in the margins. A little repeated power here. Better-supported recovery there. A balanced nutritional intake. Tissues that we’re trying to provide with the necessary building blocks to withstand what we put them through. Nothing spectacular. And above all, nothing that will replace the three pillars that still overshadow all the others: eating right, getting enough sleep, and training smart.

That was, essentially, what Brian Gaillard explained to us when we asked him about weight-loss supplements: start by understanding physiology before trying to circumvent it. A month later, our conclusion hasn’t changed. It’s simply shifted to cycling.

• Creatine seems to us to be the most directly relevant for performance, particularly for cyclists facing changes in pace and repeated efforts.
• Magnesium becomes relevant when it addresses a real need, especially during busy periods.
• Omega-3s are more of a long-term investment, especially when dietary intake is low.
• And NOVAGEN seems to us to be the most promising long-term investment, focused more on the ability to withstand training than on immediate performance.
• So these aren’t four shortcuts to performance.

They are four tools. And as is always the case with tools, their value depends less on their presence in the toolbox than on the reason for using them.

Our verdict

After a month, we hadn’t magically changed our FTP, nor did we wake up with fresh legs every morning. Thankfully. Because if four pill bottles were enough to transform a cyclist, coaches would have gone out of business long ago.

On the other hand, when used consistently, these four products form a particularly straightforward supplementation strategy: power and repeated efforts with creatine; neuromuscular balance with magnesium; EPA/DHA intake and recovery with omega-3s; and connective tissue support with collagen.

So Nutrition•pro didn’t provide us with four products capable of replacing training. Instead, the brand offered us something ultimately much more credible: four ways to help the body better withstand the demands placed upon it. And for a cyclist who still prefers to earn their watts on the road rather than on a label, this is probably the best promise a dietary supplement can make.

THE PLUSES

• Four complementary products with a cohesive overall approach
• Identified and recognized ingredients
• Excellent digestive tolerance during the four-week test
• A simple routine to incorporate into daily life
• Dosages and usage recommendations clearly indicated
• Made in France
• A credible approach to supplementation, without miracle promises
• Creatine is particularly beneficial for repeated efforts and changes in pace

CONS –

• Significant cost if all four products are used simultaneously
• No dramatic results to expect in the short term
• Four supplements to manage daily
• The benefits of magnesium and omega-3s depend heavily on diet and individual needs
• A one-month trial is too short to truly assess the long-term benefits of NOVAGEN® collagen
• Difficult to compare dosages with studies using other forms of collagen

TECHNICAL DATA SHEET

Brand	Nutrition•pro®
Products Tested	Creapure® Creatine, Magnesium+, Omegavie® Omega-3, NOVAGEN®
Test duration	4 weeks
Creapure® Creatine	3 g/day – 3 capsules
Magnesium+	4 capsules per day
Omega-3 Omegavie®	4 capsules per day
Omega-3 Intake	1,200 mg/day, including 640 mg EPA + 440 mg DHA
NOVAGEN®	5 g/day
Collagen	Naticol® x3Peptide – marine collagen
Vitamin C NOVAGEN®	120 mg/day
Manufacturing	France
Price Creatine	€29.99 – 120 capsules
Magnesium+ Price	€29.99 – 120 capsules
Omega-3 Price	€29.99 – 120 capsules
Price NOVAGEN®	€44.99 – 150 g
Contact	Nutrition•pro®

 

FAQ – Nutrition•pro Supplements for Cyclists Why combine creatine, magnesium, omega-3, and collagen? Because these four ingredients address different needs. Creatine primarily supports the ability to perform repeated intense efforts; magnesium contributes to normal muscle function and energy metabolism; omega-3s are more focused on nutrition and recovery; while collagen targets connective tissues. The value of this regimen therefore lies less in each product taken individually than in how they complement one another. Is creatine really beneficial for a cyclist? Yes, especially when the sport involves short, repeated bursts of effort. A cycling race is never perfectly linear: attacks, accelerations, climbs, sprints, or efforts to bridge a gap place heavy demands on the energy systems that creatine can support. It won’t directly boost your FTP, but it can help you better sustain explosive efforts as fatigue sets in. In fact, this was the product that seemed most directly relevant to performance during this test. When should you take these four supplements? Consistency matters more than trying to find the perfect timing. During our test, we kept the dosing simple: two Omega-3 and two Magnesium+ with breakfast, 3 g of creatine daily around the time of your workout, 5 g of NOVAGEN® about an hour before sessions that place particular stress on the tissues, and then the remaining two Omega-3 and two Magnesium+ with dinner. Should I continue taking them on rest days? Yes. These products don’t work like an energy gel consumed for an immediate effect. They’re designed for regular use and, in some cases, to build up over time. So we maintained the daily dosages, even on non-training days. Can you really feel a difference after a month? We need to remain cautious. Our field test is not a clinical study, and it’s impossible to completely isolate the effects of the supplements from those of training, sleep, or diet. Nevertheless, we observed excellent digestive tolerance, consistent recovery, and—with creatine—a noticeable improvement in the ability to perform repeated explosive efforts. For collagen in particular, four weeks is still too short a time to draw solid conclusions, as the available studies on this type of active ingredient generally cover longer periods. Can these supplements replace a balanced diet? No. That’s probably the main takeaway from this test. A supplement should address a specific need or complement your diet—not attempt to compensate for an unbalanced diet, insufficient sleep, or a poorly structured training program. Eating right, getting enough sleep, and training smart remain the three top priorities. Are the four products worth the price? Taken individually, they’re relatively affordable. However, using all four at the same time represents a significant expense. We would therefore recommend basing your decision on your specific needs rather than automatically purchasing the entire line. For a cyclist, creatine seems to us to be most directly linked to performance; the other products make more sense depending on your diet, training load, and individual goals.

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