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Our standard
Aspire is read by high school athletes, most of them minors, with no assessment and no clinician in the room. That single fact sets the boundary for everything published here. This page is that boundary in writing. It is also a list of things we decline to sell.
Written to be printed or forwarded. If an athletic director, a booster board, or a district risk officer asks what a nutrition vendor is going to put in front of students, this is the answer, and it does not change by tier or by price.
Last reviewed: August 12, 2026
Eight lines. They apply to the free material, to Program Access, and to anything a coach forwards to a family. There is no higher tier where they relax.
01
Athletes already meet bicarbonate, nitrate and caffeine, and pretending otherwise sends a coach to a forum. So where we cover an endurance aid we say the same five things every time: fuel, carbohydrate availability, sleep and clinician-managed iron status come first and are the whole answer for nearly every high-school runner; this is not a recommendation to use it; the research base is adult and the effect is small next to training; supplements are not pre-market approved, so third-party certification is the only real protection and a positive test is the athlete’s problem either way; and the decision belongs to the family and a physician, not to a coach and not to us. Substance-specific decision material is withheld from the launch product while it undergoes clinical review.
Where the specific answer lives: One-to-one care, where there is an assessment, a history, and a dietitian who is responsible for the decision.
02
A number that hands an athlete to a professional is the point of the material, so we print it plainly — how long a pattern has to last, which signs together mean stop coaching and call someone. A number a coach or family would then manage is a treatment target, and that belongs to the clinician: we do not publish one, name a panel to request, or tell a family what result to chase. Iron is a permanent exception even to our own framework — no target, no amount, no named panel at any tier, because repletion without labs carries real risk and a low result can mask something that needs a physician first.
Where testing decisions live: The athlete’s physician. Our material teaches a coach what pattern is worth a referral and gives the family language for that visit.
03
We do not run a weigh-in, sell one, or ask a program to run one. There is no body-fat, body-composition, or body-mass-index feature anywhere in the product and there will not be one. Nothing about an individual athlete’s body is stored on our servers, trended over time, or shown to a coach, an athletic director, or anyone else on their team.
What we measure instead: Behavior and schedule: whether an athlete ate before practice, what is in the bag, whether recovery happened, whether the plan survived a real week.
04
No cutting plan, no deficit target, no goal weight, and no framing that treats a lighter athlete as a better one. Under-fueling is the problem that actually shows up in high school distance running, and the material is built to correct it. Coach-facing material is explicit that body comments, public weigh-ins, and food talk are risks to be removed from a program, not tools to be used carefully.
Where a weight question goes: One-to-one care with a parent present, or the athlete’s physician. If the concern is disordered eating, we say so plainly and refer to a clinician who specializes in it.
05
Relative energy deficiency in sport is covered so a coach can recognize a pattern and act on it. A coach is never asked to grade, rank, or diagnose an athlete. Our RED-S material states on its face that it is a conversation and referral aid rather than a diagnosis. Responses are not sent to a coach and are never attached to a team, nothing is stored without explicit parental consent, and the only internal view is an anonymous count with no athlete identity attached.
What a coach is asked to do: Notice, document the pattern privately, and route it to the athletic trainer, the family, and a physician. Noticing early is the coach’s job. Diagnosing is not.
06
Bottles at practice, breaks on a schedule, easy refills, sodium with fluids when it is hot, and a tighter cadence on hard days. We do not hand a program a urine-color chart, and we do not build an athlete’s fluid plan from a chart or from a scale. Urine that is brown, cola-colored, red, or pink is a medical symptom, not a hydration grade, and goes to a physician the same day.
Where individual sweat testing lives: A sports medicine clinic or a dietitian working with that athlete directly. We do not sell testing, and when a program wants numbers the honest answer is a referral.
07
Nothing here asks a coach to manage an emergency with a handout. Where a sign is urgent, the material says so and names the next call: the school or program emergency action plan, the athletic trainer, and the athlete’s physician. Call 911 when there is immediate danger. Call or text 988 for a mental health crisis. We would rather over-refer than be the reason a call was delayed.
Who is first responder: Your athletic trainer and the school’s emergency action plan. Nothing Aspire publishes displaces either one, and no Aspire material makes a return-to-play or clearance decision.
08
Amounts, protocols, and whether one specific athlete should do one specific thing require an assessment, a history, and a clinician who carries the decision. For any athlete under 18, a parent joins the call. That boundary is not caution dressed up as an upsell — the assessment is the thing that makes a specific answer safe, and a published page cannot contain one.
What that means for a program: Program Access is general education for a whole team. Individual assessment and treatment are a separate service, and we will say so rather than answer an individual clinical question in a group setting.
A safety policy that claims to cost nothing is a marketing page. This one has a price and we would rather you read it here than discover it in week six.
No commodity board, supplement company, food manufacturer, or equipment brand funds, sponsors, or reviews this material. There is nothing we need an athlete to buy, which is why the answer is usually more rice and more toast.
Set by Luke Rodriguez, MS, RDN, who is also a head high school cross country and track coach in Colorado. The standard applies to everything published under the Aspire name, including material a coach shares with a team.
If you find a page, tool, handout, or email from us that breaks any line on this page, send us the address. We will correct it or take it down, and we would rather hear it from you than defend it. Write to luke@aspireperformancerd.com.
See also the medical and professional disclaimer, how one-to-one care works, and the privacy policy.