Dr Rob Wildman to launch sports nutrition brand: ‘It’s my opus’
Dr Wildman served as Chief Science Officer for Post Holdings active nutrition brands, including Dymatize and Powerbar for about a decade, and has chaired the sports nutrition committee at the American Herbal Products Association for about the same amount of time.
“Coming out of Dymatize, I had a lot of momentum and relationships right through from supply chain and ingredient innovation to regulatory compliance, and also with professional sports and athletes,” Dr Wildman told us.
And he is leveraging every aspect of his career for his new brand: TYM Athletic Performance or simply TYM Performance, like the website.
The company’s website went live earlier this year, and currently features four products: Whey isolate, a pre-workout, micronized creatine, and a DHA omega-3. These pilot products have been available to select relationships, like the Women’s Football Alliance and the NFL Alumni Academy, explained Dr Wildman, and the official launch of the brand is later this fall.
It’s not just relationships with professional training facilities, gyms, coaches, and athletes, but Dr Wildman’s experiences in the industry means he has strong relationships with ingredient suppliers, manufacturers, testing institutions, university researchers, and equipment manufacturers.
A key focus is the certifications – Dr Wildman said he is committed to achieving more certifications for his products than anyone else. He has been working with LGC to achieve Informed Sport certification and is the first brand to offer LGC’s soon to launch Informed Protein certification.
“Every opportunity we get to achieve a quality mark, to reassure the consumer, we’ll take,” he said.
“We’re committed to full transparency. I will make the product in front of people. I want to take the guesswork out of taking a sports nutrition product.”
NFL Alumni Academy
A key partnership to note is the one with the NFL Alumni Academy, which describes itself as an in-season training program that develops “NFL-ready” players on the campus of the Pro Football Hall-of-Fame Village in Canton, Ohio. The Academy trains the top free agent players in preparation to sign an in-season contract with NFL teams. Dr Wildman is Director of Performance Nutrition at the academy and TYM products are the nutritional supplements that are used by the players there.
“It’s a food-first philosophy with strategic supplementation,” he said. “It’s customized nutrition for these athletes.”
While many sports nutrition brands offer an omega-3 product, Dr Wildman noted that TYM's is “different to what’s in the mainstream”. The product features a highly concentrated DHA omega-3 that provides a two-gram dose per serving to support brain health, which is a primary concern for many elite football players in the US.
“We’re done splitting the atom figuring out if triglyceride forms or ethyl ester forms or others are better,” he said. “Compliance is the main thing with omega-3 products. It can take four to six weeks to increase DHA levels in the cell membranes in the brain.”
Another omega-3 product called Triple 3, which contains EPA, DPA, and DHA, is slated for launch at a later date.
Distribution
As TYM gears up for its official in a month or so, there will be some distribution in South America and Mexico, again leveraging the relationships Dr Wildman has built over the years. The products will be available direct to US consumer on the TYM website, and there are only a couple of chosen retailers in the US stocking the products, he said.
“We have retailers reaching out, but we’ll pick and choose,” he said. “We’ll pick ONE major retail partner in 2022.”
“My opus”
“At both Dymatize and Powerbar, I was extremely fortunate to be fully supported and we looked at the things I wanted to do. For the last eight years at Dymatize, we either supported or challenged the products in university studies or we supported studies into how best to work out, for example. We created a collective think tank,” he said.
“TYM is my opus. I’m not in a hurry to make it huge. I think it will become very prominent globally. We’re aligning with training facilities, top coaches, organizations, and partners like American Barbell,” added Dr Wildman. “And with the NFL Alumni Association, beyond the Academy, we’ll get to work with a big umbrella. We’re confident in what we’re doing.
“We don’t even have sales dollar one yet, but we’ve got four university studies going with our products,” he noted. Indeed, studies are ongoing at the likes of Mississippi State, Florida State, and Baylor University.
So, what’s in a name? “I was an undergraduate in the 80s. I’ve spent decades in sports nutrition, and that’s my time. My time is now your time,” he said.
“Everyone understands time, especially in the fitness field,” he added. “Exercise time, recovery time, time in the gym. Time when you sleep, when you train. Time is everything.”
