Vitamins Are Nuts And Bolts*
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Yesterday, the top tennis coach in California asked me, "What combinations of vitamins should I give the guys before a match?" His conception of the function of nutrients as one-hit performance boosters is all too common. And the myth is continually fueled by supplement ads promise to turn you into Arnold Schwarzenegger overnight.

Let's get it straight: The business of nutrition is to build a better body. Any one-hit, slum-bam, immediate ergogenic boost is a drug effect. You can use mega-doses of some vitamins to produce a drug effect. But they are very inefficient as hot-shot ergogenics, because the body recognizes them as building and maintenance department and treats them accordingly.

That's the way you should treat them too. Vitamins are essential components of structures and functions in the body that take years to develop to their full capacity. You feed them in every day in the right amounts, train regularly and consistently week in-week out, and gradually your body will change to match your dreams. I've done it with young lads and lasses a thousand times: watched them grow from fumbling, stumbling, no particular talent, until their muscles, their bones, and their brain, became one unified, focussed structure of grace and power that seized Olympic Gold.’

*from Micheal Colgan's "Optimum Sports Nutrition", ISBN 0-9624840-5-9, Advanced Research Press, New York, 1993