Beetroot to level up your performance?

Many sports supplements do not live up to their hype, but beetroot on the other hand consistently seems to help improve performance – and if you’re less fit, you are likely to notice the benefits even more!

What I love about taking beetroot is that it can simply be a standard part of your diet – eat it / juice it / whack it in a smoothie – you get all the amazing health benefits whilst also improving your training and performance.

• How we think it works
• Research on performance benefits
• Possible side effects
• When to take it
• How to take it and how much
• Watch outs
• Recommendations

How we think it works

Other benefits of nitric oxide include: stimulating gene expression and supporting the immune system by modifying it’s response to a threat.

Research on the performance benefits

Endurance

A large scale review of 23 studies points to beetroot juice consistently improving endurance exercise at a range of distances (1). Benefits include increased efficiency and time to exhaustion at submaximal intensities and better oxygen uptake. You could expect to see an improvement in race time between 1-3% (2).

High intensity

A large scale review shows that beetroot juice may also improve sprint performance, helping you recover quicker and reducing muscular fatigue (3). 

Strength training

Beetroot juice may also improve muscular contraction and efficiency (4) allowing for more repetitions in your strength set before you fatigue (3).

Possible side effects

Nitrates inhibit the absorption of certain nutrients and plant-based sources of iron (non-heme), so you’d want to be mindful about your overall intake in conjunction with your current diet patterns.

Also if you’re at risk of kidney stones that would be another consideration.

Again not really a side effect but taste preference – some people dislike the taste so it’s a bit tricky! Putting it into a smoothie with other ingredients is a possible solution.

When to take it

Pre workout:

Take as a pre workout approximately 1-2 hours before training. Acute use may help with:

• better oxygen & nutrient delivery to the cells to generate energy
• increased energy efficiency
• reduced energy & oxygen cost for same workload

Longer term (daily basis)

You’d want to do this for a minimum of 6 days before seeing benefits that look like:

• How hard you can work at higher intensities (peak power output)
• Increased capacity to take in oxygen and use it max intensities (VO2 max)
• Further improved performance

When you take beetroot consistently over a period of time there are likely adaptations that begin to occur at a gene level and to the power house of the cell (mitochondria) because of the nitric oxide and also the polyphenols that further improve performance (5).

How to take it & how much

You can juice it or bake it (6)! Either 500 ml of beetroot juice (or in a smoothie) or 500 mg of beetroot raw or baked. Avoid other methods of cooking as they will reduce the nitrate content.

You could also go for a supplement form (powder or crystals) but then you’d miss out on the health benefits of beetroot as the vegetable.

Watch outs

Firstly, don’t take the beetroot around mouthwash time since this can prevent the desired increase in nitric.

Secondly if you take caffeine pre workout then beetroot may negate its effects since caffeine constricts blood vessels whereas beetroot (the nitric oxide formed from the nitrates) relaxes the blood vessels. So better to go for one or the other.

Thirdly, don’t be alarmed by your stools turning beetroot colour – that is totally normal if you eat enough of it.

Recommendations

• Providing the taste works for you and you train regularly, I’d shoot for having it on a regular basis. It’s great for your health and improves performance even more.
• If you don’t like the taste, try it in a smoothie with some other delicious ingredients that you do like!
• I’d also trial how it works as a pre workout too.

It’s a regular part of my diet and I’m off to buy some now.

Let me know your thoughts and experiences in the comments below!

References

1. Domiguez et al. (2017). Effects of beetroot juice supplementation on cardiorespiratory endurance in athletes. A systematic review. 
2. Lanceley et al. (2013). Effects of dietary nitrate supplementation on 5km running time trial performance in trained female runners.
3. Dominguez et al. (2018). Effects of beetroot juice supplementation on intermittent high intensity exercise efforts.
4. Whitfield et al. (2016). Beetroot juice supplementation reduces whole body oxygen consumption but does not improve indicies of mitochondrial efficiency in human skeletal muscle.
5. Murphy et al. (2012). Whole beetroot consumption acutely improves running performance.
6. Vanhatalo et al. (2010). Acute and chronic effects of dietary nitrate supplementation on blood pressure and the physiological responses to moderate intensity and incremental exercise.