Hexis is a predictive personalised nutrition platform powered by AI. It was developed following breakthroughs in human performance science, and claims to be changing how athletes fuel.
The company notes that… ‘Innovation sits right at the core of sport. Finding new and improved ways to enhance performance, elevate recovery and amplify training adaptations is continually being pursued to help athletes realise their potential.
‘The front-line or trenches of high-performance sport is a hotbed for these innovations and is where the Hexis story begins.’
Hexis is positioned as a new way to fuel athletic performance. The platform utilises ‘Carb Codes’, which periodise nutrition intake to ensure that the right nutrients are being consumed at the right times of day in order to support training and performance.
By leveraging a periodised fuelling strategy, Hexis identifies, plans and schedules when a user’s body needs low, medium and high carbohydrate meals and snacks.
Fuelling is also tailored to the strains and stresses of the day. This strategy can in-turn delay time to fatigue and enhance the body’s metabolic flexibility; and, with improvements in both carbohydrate and fat usage, athletes can get the most out of every workout.
Hexis Co-founder Dr Sam Impey’s PhD research centred around how nutrition could be used as a training tool to ‘fuel for the work required’.
From this research, Impey unveiled how a periodised approach can have beneficial impacts on the body, specifically to:
- Enhance how the body adapts to a training stimulus, helping athletes make improvements faster
- Elevate the ability to perform in competition, as well as during those hard workouts when athletes need to push themselves to the limit
- Accelerate how quickly the body recovers from training and competition
- Reduce the risk of illness and injury by maintaining immune function and supporting general health
This approach to nutrition is now being used by UCI World Tour Teams alongside other elite athletes. Sam Impey, who is also the current Lead Nutritionist at British Cycling, is working alongside a co-founding team at Hexis. This team has expertise in sports nutrition, data science, behaviour change and computer science.
The Hexis aim is democratising access to scientific breakthroughs and making these benefits available to athletes of all levels.
Hexis CEO David Dunne said “We are on a mission to unleash human potential. Our ‘why’ is to help individuals realise their potential.
“Hexis does this is by translating the science of human performance into personalised daily nutrition practices tailored to the demands of your workouts, lifestyle and goals. Hexis technology helps you fuel smarter, perform better and recover faster.”
The expertise of the founding team has been recognised by some of the top performers in the pro peloton, such as Tour de France stage winner Bob Jungels and multiple Time Trial World Champion Rohan Dennis, who are now both users of, and investors in, Hexis.
The Hexis team is also in the process of adding two new product features: integrating wearables and food tracking. Also in development is a new ‘intra-workout’ fuelling feature to help athletes know how much food to eat during their workouts. This will be released towards the summer.
David Dunne at Hexis added “It’s important that we put these tools and expertise in an athlete’s pocket, it supports their autonomy and provides clarity and confidence to their nutrition.”
