Conditioning Starts
Before Performance

An athlete cannot deliver a peak performance if illness, fatigue, poor sleep or disrupted nutrition has already removed the opportunity. The Japan Association of Athletics Federations, or JAAF, announced a three-hour seminar for August 28 that was designed to examine conditioning through the lens of immune health.

The event was scheduled for the main conference room at the Ajinomoto National Training Center in Tokyo. It was aimed at certified sports dietitians, registered dietitians and people supporting nutrition at corporate, university, secondary-school and club teams. Attendance was free, with 100 places offered on a first-come basis.

Three Views for the Nutrition Team

The first 40-minute session was assigned to Kazuhiro Shimizu, a senior researcher at the Japan Institute of Sports Sciences within the High Performance Sport Center. Its title joined two ideas: “total conditioning” and “self-conditioning.” Shimizu specialises in conditioning and exercise immunology, and a separate 2024 JAAF seminar report identifies infection control and day-to-day health management among his areas of work.

The next 40 minutes were reserved for a scientific director from Otsuka Pharmaceutical’s Nutraceuticals Division to discuss research on Lactiplantibacillus pentosus ONRICb0240. A JAAF sports-nutrition specialist who also supports Wacoal’s women’s athletics team was then scheduled to address how self-conditioning support is practised in the field.

A 45-minute panel was due to bring those three speakers together with Masumi Aoki, the 100-metre hurdler from the 77 Bank team. JAAF’s current athlete profile records a personal best of 12.68 seconds, set in August 2026. The program also included a separate ten-minute information segment from Otsuka.

“Total” Does Not Mean Immunity Alone

HPSC defines conditioning as arranging all the factors needed for high performance into a desirable state for a particular objective. Those factors extend beyond physical fitness. The framework includes skill, medical care, psychology, equipment and scheduling, and it asks experts to coordinate while athletes learn to recognise and manage their own condition.

Immune health is one part of that system, not a single score. Secretory immunoglobulin A, or SIgA, in saliva contributes to defence at mucosal surfaces and is one marker used in exercise-immunology research. One measurement does not, by itself, describe the entire immune system or diagnose an infection.

A JAAF report on a 2018 lecture by Shimizu illustrates the breadth of the practical problem. It listed hand hygiene, avoiding unnecessary contact with the eyes, nose and mouth, not sharing towels or drinks, maintaining hydration and humidity, recovery methods and nutrition. That older report cannot establish what was said in the 2026 seminar. It does show why “immune conditioning” should not be reduced to consuming one ingredient.

What the Bacterial-Strain Study Can—and Cannot—Show

A 2026 paper examined food containing ONRICb0240 in competitive male university judoka during rapid weight loss. Twenty-six participants were randomly allocated, and 17 completed the protocol and were included in the analysis: nine consumed the food for five weeks and eight received no b240 product. Both groups trained normally for four weeks and used individually selected rapid-weight-loss methods during the final week.

The paper reported that salivary SIgA secretion declined after weight loss in the control group but did not change significantly in the intake group. It also found between-group differences in the proportion of days with self-reported upper-respiratory symptoms and in days when participants described their abdominal condition as good. The study did not count medically diagnosed infections or test whether the product improved competition performance.

The design has important limits. It was randomised but open-label, used no placebo and analysed only 17 men. Weight-loss methods, training volume and dehydration methods varied by athlete. The authors explicitly call for a larger double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Two authors were Otsuka employees, a conflict disclosed in the paper.

Otsuka separately announced a six-week, double-blind, placebo-controlled study with the Institute of Science Tokyo involving adults with gingivitis. The company reported a significant between-group reduction in bleeding on probing. The gingival index, however, showed no significant difference between the groups, although the active group improved from its own baseline. That oral-health study does not demonstrate infection prevention or enhanced performance in athletes.

The Real Test Is How Support Is Combined

The program’s architecture placed a public sports scientist, a company scientist, a practising sports-nutrition specialist and an elite athlete in one discussion. That is an editorial reading of the schedule, not a report of what occurred. Without a post-event account, it is not possible to know how Aoki’s experience was used, what participants challenged or whether speakers agreed.

Otsuka was identified as a cooperating organisation and is a JAAF official major partner. Its scientist had a full research session, and the schedule separately labelled a ten-minute company information segment. Collaboration between sport and industry is not inherently disqualifying. Readers do need a visible line between federation education, independent scientific assessment and corporate information.

The defensible practical conclusion is not that every athlete should consume one food. It is that training, sleep, nutrition, recovery, medical history and travel conditions must be monitored together; dietitians, coaches, physicians and trainers need defined roles; and athletes need a way to detect change early. Whether this seminar advanced that work will depend on JAAF publishing the material and examples needed for others to inspect and apply it.