Where every number comes from
19 sources behind the health, nutrition and injury-prevention guidance in Train Smart. Each one is listed against the specific thing the app does with it — not as a general reading list — so you can check our working rather than take the reference on trust.
This list is generated directly from the app’s own citation file, so the references here and the references inside Train Smart are the same list. Last updated 2026-08-22.
Calories & macros
Your daily calorie and macronutrient targets are calculated, not guessed. These are the sources for the equations and the ranges they use.
Your maintenance calories start from the Mifflin-St Jeor resting-energy equation.
Mifflin MD, St Jeor ST, et al. A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals.
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1990 · View source
Protein targets of 1.8–2.2 g per kg of bodyweight, and the higher end while in a deficit.
Thomas DT, Erdman KA, Burke LM. ACSM Joint Position Statement: Nutrition and Athletic Performance.
Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2016 · View source
Protein intake, timing and distribution across the day.
Jäger R, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: Protein and exercise.
Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2017 · View source
General healthy-eating patterns and food-group guidance for Australian adults.
NHMRC Australian Dietary Guidelines
Australian Government — Eat For Health · View source
Practical sports-nutrition guidance for training and competition.
Sports Dietitians Australia — fact sheets
Sports Dietitians Australia · View source
Fuelling around training and matches for team-sport athletes.
Australian Institute of Sport — Nutrition
Australian Institute of Sport · View source
Training load & heart rate
How the app sets heart-rate zones and how it decides when your training load is climbing too quickly.
Heart-rate zones are a percentage of an age-predicted maximum (220 − age). This paper is also the reason we treat that number as a rough guide rather than a measurement — it is known to be imprecise for any individual, and a tested max is always better.
Tanaka H, Monahan KD, Seals DR. Age-predicted maximal heart rate revisited.
Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2001 · View source
Why sharp week-to-week jumps in training load raise injury risk — the basis for the load warnings and the gradual progressions.
Soligard T, et al. How much is too much? IOC consensus statement on load in sport and risk of injury.
British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2016 · View source
General physical-activity recommendations for adults.
Physical activity and exercise guidelines for all Australians
Australian Government Department of Health · View source
Global physical-activity and sedentary-behaviour recommendations.
WHO guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour
World Health Organization, 2020 · View source
Injury prevention
The prehab block in your sessions is not generic. These are the trials behind the specific exercises it prescribes.
Nordic hamstring curls to reduce hamstring strain — the reason they appear in nearly every prehab block.
Petersen J, et al. Preventive effect of eccentric training on acute hamstring injuries in men's soccer: a cluster-randomized controlled trial.
American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2011 · View source
The Copenhagen adductor programme to reduce groin problems — why it is prescribed for the football codes.
Harøy J, et al. The Adductor Strengthening Programme prevents groin problems among male football players: a cluster-randomised controlled trial.
British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2019 · View source
Structured warm-ups reduce injury rates in football — the basis for the warm-up protocol at the start of every session.
Soligard T, et al. Comprehensive warm-up programme to prevent injuries in young female footballers: cluster randomised controlled trial.
BMJ, 2008 · View source
General sports-injury prevention and safe return-to-sport guidance.
Sports Medicine Australia
Sports Medicine Australia · View source
Sleep & recovery
What the readiness score and the recovery advice are based on.
Sleep recommendations for athletes, and why sleep is weighted so heavily in your readiness score.
Walsh NP, et al. Sleep and the athlete: narrative review and 2021 expert consensus recommendations.
British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2021 · View source
Recovery, monitoring and the limits of what wearable signals can tell you.
Soligard T, et al. IOC consensus statement on load in sport and risk of injury.
British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2016 · View source
Comparing your HRV to your own rolling baseline rather than to anyone else's numbers, and reading a sustained drop as accumulated fatigue.
Plews DJ, Laursen PB, Stanley J, Kilding AE, Buchheit M. Training adaptation and heart rate variability in elite endurance athletes: opening the door to effective monitoring.
Sports Medicine, 2013 · View source
Using resting heart rate against your own baseline when HRV isn't available, and why one day's reading on its own means very little.
Buchheit M. Monitoring training status with HR measures: do all roads lead to Rome?
Frontiers in Physiology, 2014 · View source
How much a change in resting heart rate or HRV can actually tell you about training status — the reason readiness nudges a session rather than overhauling it.
Bellenger CR, et al. Monitoring Athletic Training Status Through Autonomic Heart Rate Regulation: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
Sports Medicine, 2016 · View source
Why the list is short, and verified
Every reference here was checked against the source’s own record rather than recalled. That is not a boast — it is a consequence of getting it wrong: two identifiers in the first version of this list pointed at completely unrelated papers, one of them a lymphoma study. A citation list exists precisely to prevent that, so it has to be verified to be worth anything.
The claim against each source is deliberately the specific thing the app does with it, not a summary of the paper. A summary tells you what was studied; the claim tells you what we concluded from it, which is the part you should be able to disagree with.
We also do not cite what we do not use. There are far more papers on every one of these topics than appear here — this is the list the product actually rests on.
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