Pillar Performance NZ: What Informed Sport Certification Actually Means
Supplement labels make a lot of promises. Most of the time, the only way to know if what's on the label actually matches what's in the tub is to trust the brand and hope for the best. Pillar Performance decided that wasn't good enough, and it's a big part of why we carry the full range at BodyStrong.
What Is Informed Sport Certification?
Informed Sport is a quality assurance programme that batch tests supplements for substances banned under World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) rules. It's the standard used by professional and Olympic athletes worldwide, because for them a contaminated supplement doesn't just mean a wasted purchase, it can mean a positive drug test and the end of a career.
Certification means every single batch of a product, not just a sample from the original formulation, is independently tested for more than 250 prohibited substances before it's allowed to carry the Informed Sport logo. That's a meaningfully higher bar than most supplement quality claims, which are often self-reported or based on one-off testing rather than an ongoing, batch-by-batch process.
Why Pillar Performance Stands Out
In 2022, Pillar Performance became Australia's first sports micronutrition brand to certify its entire product range with Informed Sport. Founder Damien Fitzpatrick, a former athlete himself, built the company around a simple observation: micronutrition (magnesium, iron, omega-3s, joint support) had been treated as an afterthought in sports nutrition, formulated cheaply and rarely tested to the same standard as protein powders and pre-workouts.
Pillar set out to change that, and getting full-range certification wasn't easy. Micronutrient formulations are notoriously complex to batch test compared to single-ingredient products, which is part of why so few brands attempt it. Pillar's commitment to doing it anyway is why the brand now supplies more than 200 professional teams globally, across the Premier League, NFL, NBA, Bundesliga, AFL, NRL, rugby union and UCI World Cycling, along with elite athletes like Jan Frodeno (three-time IRONMAN World Champion) and Zac Stubblety-Cook (Olympic gold medallist).
Pillar also publishes a batch certificate library, so any customer can look up the actual test results for the specific batch they've purchased rather than just taking the brand's word for it.
What This Means If You're Not a Tested Athlete
You don't have to be a professional competing under drug-testing rules to benefit from this. Informed Sport certification is also a proxy for something every buyer actually cares about: manufacturing quality control. A brand that puts every batch through independent banned-substance testing is, by necessity, running tighter quality systems across the board, from raw ingredient sourcing to final production. It's one of the clearest signals available that what's on the label is what's in the product.
What We Stock
We carry a solid cross-section of the Pillar Performance range at BodyStrong, covering the areas most of our customers ask about:
- Triple Magnesium (powder and capsules) - three bioavailable forms of magnesium for sleep, cramping and recovery
- Ultra Immune C - high-dose vitamin C and D3 for immune support
- Ultra Omega Fish Oil - triple-strength concentrated omega-3
- Iron Advanced + C - Ferrochel iron bisglycinate chelate with vitamin C for absorption
- Curcumin Advanced - Theracurmin and BioPerine for joint comfort and recovery
- Collagen Repair (Tendon & Ligament) - Tendoforte-based support for connective tissue
- Grass-Fed Whey Protein Isolate and Vegan Protein Isolate - both Informed Sport certified
Every product in the range carries the same certification, so whichever one fits your goals, you're getting the same standard of testing behind it.
The BodyStrong Team
