Team

All of our coaches have completed a scientifically based degree and/or training. In addition, we have all played a variety of sports ourselves, and, therefore know the lifestyle of athletes quite well, which helps us to adapt our recommendations to the everyday challenges of athletes.

Philosophy

athlEATcoach stands for applying and promoting scientifically proven nutritional strategies. We want to communicate these to athletes and other interest groups in a comprehensible way and thereby dispel nutrition myths.

We deliberately do not cooperate with any companies that sell products because we want to analyse and advise independently and objectively. This is the only way we can maintain our self-imposed high-quality standard.

Jörn ‘Jay’ Utermann

Founder of athlEATcoach

After completing his bachelor’s degree in nutritional science, he specialised in the nutritional needs of athletes by completing the IOC Diploma and a Master’s degree in Sports Nutrition at the Leeds Beckett University in Leeds, England. He now lives in Edinburgh – Scotland.

Jay has taken part in competitions in sports like handball, tennis, wrestling, and CrossFit and has additional experience in training MMA and bouldering. Since he had to step back from sports due to a series of injuries, he scours through scientific journals in order to provide his coaches and customers with the best information available.

Vici Birnbaum

Expert for weight-category sports and youth athletes

Vici is a trained dietitian and advises athletes at the Olympic training centre in Leipzig, where she mainly works with judo athletes, swimmers and triathletes. In addition to working with competitive athletes, she also supports obese people and individuals with specific clinical needs.

She has been doing weight training and CrossFit for 4 years — a hobby that is not taking lightly, even on holidays!

Lucas Ille

Our expert for team-sport athletes

Since he entered the gym for the first time as a little boy, he instantly got hooked by handball and played this sport for about 20 years. He is also a keen skier and hits the weights in the gym regularly. 

During his BSc sport science studies, Lucas noticed quite quickly that he was more interested in the complex interrelationships of sport physiology and nutritional needs of athletes. Hence, he pursued his Master in Sport and Exercise nutrition and wrote his Master thesis about recovery strategies of professional handball players, and started working as a nutrition coach for athlEATcoach in 2022.

In his role as a nutrition coach, he mainly works team-sport athletes and people who want to effectively lose weight or build muscle mass. However, he has also been able to gain experience in coaching triathletes and powerlifters – he is a true all-rounder.

Mario Franz

Our expert for endurance sports and hobby athletes of all kinds

Mario is our expert for ambitious endurance athletes and functional fitness sports such as CrossFit and Hyrox. He has been doing triathlons for more than 15 years and has already successfully contested all distances ranging from sprint triathlons to Ironman. In addition, Mario has been practicing CrossFit for 2 years and has won several top placements in Hyrox competitions. Since his successful graduation as a nutrition coach (“Evidence-Based Nutrition Specialist” following Rawo), he has supported triathletes in optimising their performances and advised amateur athletes on body fat reduction. He is also the contact person for nutritional questions in his CrossFit Box.