Limitations
inflammation
INFLAMMATION
One limitation of this study was the short duration of MA ingestion. Our study was conducted for a short period of one week to ascertain the impact of MA on inflammation and injury. In addition, because this study was conducted with active athletes, it was limited to one week because of the constraints of accommodating their schedules. Therefore, future studies will need to extend the duration of the study to examine the effects of MA in more detail. Additionally, since we did not measure training load during intervention, it is possible that differences in training load may have affected the degree of damage/inflammation. Furthermore, the positional qualities of water polo players may have affected the training load, therefore future studies should include individual differences in protocols. Another limitation is that the participants of the experiment were rare top water polo athletes in Japan. By targeting athletes with well-defined athlete and competition characteristics, such as power and endurance athletes, rather than complex water polo athletes, it may be possible to confirm the detailed effects of MA on metabolic characteristics and to inform nutritional strategies according to energy mechanisms. Future research should consider the degree of competition, gender differences, and the competition itself in order to generalize the outcomes of this study and make them more applicable to the field.