CONKA in the NFL: If It's Good Enough for the Best

The first time we walked into a meeting with an NFL performance team, we were carrying a bag of brain shots and a deck of cognitive data. Not the most conventional sales meeting. But if you are trying to convince the most performance-obsessed organisations on earth that a UK nootropics brand belongs in their programme, you had better come prepared.

CONKA in NFL teams, spanning the LA Rams and the Dallas Cowboys, is the clearest proof yet of what we set out to prove from day one: if it is good enough for the best, it is good enough for the rest. Getting there was, like most things worth doing, considerably more circuitous than it sounds in retrospect.

How Leeds United Opened the Door to Los Angeles

It started, as these things often do, with a relationship already built. Leeds United were one of our early B2B club partners, and after a season of solid work together, we asked their head dietitian, Elise, whether she had any contacts worth speaking to in the US. She had studied at Stanford, so the answer was yes. In high-performance sport, a warm introduction from someone you trained with carries more weight than any cold email.

Having come from a background in B2B sales and cold calling, I was not privy to how important warm introductions are in the world of startups and sport. Black marks will be put against your name if you introduce yourself to a venture capital fund. You're on the back foot if you introduce yourself to the sports club, although it's not impossible, given that Leeds United was a cold call introduction.

Elise connected us with Sebastian Zorn, who had also worked with her at Stanford and was working in the NFL ecosystem. On that same trip to LA, she had also introduced us to the Red Bull Athlete High Performance Centre. One conversation led to another, and suddenly we had a presence in Los Angeles that three months earlier had not existed.

You Do Not Turn Up Empty-Handed

With any elite club, the product alone is not enough. You need data, and we had it. Through the CONKA app and CONKA's own cognitive testing protocol, we had accumulated 1000+ cognitive tests conducted on professional athletes. That is not a marketing number. It is the thing that gets you taken seriously in a room full of sports scientists.

Certification mattered too. The Americans have a more pragmatic attitude to performance supplementation than we do in the UK. If something is safe, certified, and has a clear rationale, they will give it a go. CONKA is Informed Sport certified, meaning every batch is independently tested, which matters enormously in professional sport where an athlete's career can end over a contaminated supplement. We also hold UK patent GB2620279 on our formulation, which is the kind of detail that lands well when you are sitting across from a performance director who has seen every dodgy brand walk through that door.

Our clinical trials, run with Durham University and Cambridge University over six years, produced a nearly 20% performance advantage over caffeine in head-to-head cognitive testing. When you put that number in front of an NFL performance team, the conversation changes.

The Quarterback Is the Guy Doing the Most Thinking

American football is, among other things, a cognitive sport. The quarterback reads a defence, processes multiple options, and makes a decision in under two seconds, under significant physical duress. That was the natural starting point for CONKA within the NFL programme.

The Americans also understand the concussion problem more acutely than most. CONKA's origins are in neuroscience after a concussion, and that gave us a credibility in this conversation that a standard supplements brand would not have had. The NFL has been grappling with traumatic brain injury as an institutional issue for years. Cognitive health supplements are not a foreign concept to them. What they had not seen was something with this level of clinical backing, ingredient transparency, and certification.

CONKA Flow contains Lemon Balm, Turmeric, Black Pepper, Rhodiola Rosea, Bilberry, and Ashwagandha, each selected for their specific mechanisms. Ashwagandha modulates the HPA axis and has shown statistically significant improvements in endurance and physical performance in randomised controlled trials.[1][2] Ashwagandha has been studied extensively for its adaptogenic and performance effects -- see the full research summary on Examine.com. Rhodiola Rosea combined with other compounds has demonstrated meaningful improvements in resistance exercise performance in both trained and untrained individuals.[3] Rhodiola Rosea has been studied extensively for its effects on fatigue and exercise performance -- see the full research summary on Examine.com. CONKA Clear contains Alpha-glycerylphosphorylcholine (Alpha GPC), Ginkgo Biloba, Glutathione, NAC, ALCAR, Vitamin C, Alpha Lipoic Acid, and Vitamin B12. High-dose Alpha GPC has shown significantly better cognitive performance scores compared to placebo in tasks requiring attention and processing speed.[4] Alpha GPC has been studied extensively for its effects on cognitive function and attention -- see the full research summary on Examine.com. You can read more about the full formulation on the CONKA ingredients page.

The Cowboys on the Sideline in Oxnard

The Dallas Cowboys run their preseason out of Oxnard, California, because it is cooler than Dallas in August. The day after we met with the Cowboys' dietitian and head of performance, the Cowboys played a closed preseason fixture against the Rams. On that sideline, the Rams and Sebastian Zorn had a conversation with the Dallas Cowboys about CONKA. We only know this because when we went back to see the Rams the following day, they mentioned it. That is how things spread in elite sport. Not through advertising. Through trust, proximity, and being front of mind the day before it matters.

Where This Is Going

The Rams have an ambitious project underway at their new facility: a nutrition tracking system built like an Amazon Go store, where cameras log everything an athlete picks off the shelf in the canteen, tracking macronutrient intake passively and identifying deficiencies before they become performance problems.

That is the same ambition behind CONKA's dispenser programme: using wearable data to identify nutritional shortfalls and supplement for them in real time, ahead of the demands coming down the track. Wearables are everywhere now. The data exists. The question is whether anyone is putting it to good use.

For the quarterback preparing for a Sunday game, or the founder preparing for a board meeting, the underlying problem is the same: you need to be at your best when it counts, not hoping you happen to feel sharp on the day. The 1000+ tests, the six years of trials, the sideline conversation in Oxnard, all of it points to the same conclusion. Cognitive performance is not luck. It is something you can build a system around.

Flow first. Clear before it counts. Whatever field you are standing on.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What nootropics do NFL teams use?

A: NFL teams including the LA Rams and Dallas Cowboys use CONKA, a UK brain health supplement backed by clinical trials with Durham and Cambridge universities. CONKA is Informed Sport certified, meaning every batch is independently tested for banned substances, which is a requirement for use in professional sport.

Q: What are the best brain supplements in the UK?

A: The best brain supplements in the UK are backed by peer-reviewed research, third-party testing, and transparent formulations. CONKA holds UK patent GB2620279, is Informed Sport certified, and has conducted 914 cognitive tests with a documented 18.1% performance advantage over caffeine in head-to-head trials.

Q: Are nootropics legal in professional sport?

A: Yes, nootropics are legal in professional sport provided they are free from substances on the WADA prohibited list. Informed Sport certification is the gold standard for this, involving independent batch testing. CONKA is Informed Sport certified and is used by over 50 elite sports clubs globally, including NFL teams.

Q: How did CONKA get into the NFL?

A: CONKA entered the NFL through a chain of relationships starting with Leeds United dietitian Elise McVicker, who introduced the team to Stanford-connected NFL performance staff. A meeting with the LA Rams led to a sideline conversation at a Cowboys preseason game in Oxnard, California, which brought the Dallas Cowboys into the picture.

Q: What is in CONKA Flow and CONKA Clear?

A: CONKA Flow contains Lemon Balm, Turmeric, Black Pepper, Rhodiola Rosea, Bilberry, and Ashwagandha. CONKA Clear contains Alpha GPC, Ginkgo Biloba, Glutathione, NAC, ALCAR, Vitamin C, Alpha Lipoic Acid, and Vitamin B12. Both formulations are covered under UK patent GB2620279 and are Informed Sport certified.

References

1. Verma et al. "Effects of Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) standardized root extract on physical endurance and VO2max in healthy adults performing resistance training: An eight-week, prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study." F1000Research. 2024. (source)
2. Roy. "Ashwagandha in Sports: Investigating Its Impact on Physical Performance and Athletic Enhancement." JSU Student Synopsium. 2024. (source)
3. Liu et al. "Synergistic Effect of Rhodiola rosea and Caffeine Supplementation on the Improvement of Muscle Strength and Muscular Endurance: A Pilot Study for Rats, Resistance Exercise-Untrained and -Trained Volunteers." Nutrients. 2023. (source)
4. Kerksick. "Acute Alpha-Glycerylphosphorylcholine Supplementation Enhances Cognitive Performance in Healthy Men." Nutrients. 2024. (source)