Red Beets: Good For You And For Your Exercise Performance
Would you like to know how to incorporate the "wisdom of beets" into your pre-workout routine?
Takeaways
Red beets have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties
Beets help with blood oxygenation
Drink beet juice or eat beets before your workouts
The art of breathing
🫁 Oxygen is a crucial element in our exercise routines. As we inhale, it moves from the alveoli—tiny branches of air tubes in the lungs—to the bloodstream via minuscule blood vessels. Once bound to hemoglobin, it is transported to the tissues throughout the body. This is how 98% of our oxygen reaches its final destination, fueling our muscles and enabling us to perform at our best.
😳 Now, here's the kicker. What if I told you there's a natural way to boost your exercise performance, enhance oxygen transport, and even slow the body's oxygen consumption during exercise? All this while maintaining the same level of effort. Intrigued? Well, let me introduce you to the secret: Red beets.
Red beets close-up
Red beetroot is considered one of the top 10 most powerful antioxidant vegetables.1
Red beets are not just any food; they are an exceptional addition to your diet with many positive effects. It's time to start incorporating them into your meals to experience their many benefits and boost your exercise performance if you are not already doing it.
🫀Above all, beets have high levels of nitrates. Nitrates help dilate arteries, which consequently leads to improved cardiovascular function. Therefore, beet supplementation can enhance exercise performance and metabolic efficiency in various exercise durations, intensities, and populations. If you were thinking, ‘I am not an athlete. Does it apply to me as well?’ Yes, you are most likely to experience positive physiological benefits too (as seen in the image above).
In short, nitrates main benefits for athletes are:2
Regulation of blood pressure and blood flow
Protection of the heart against cellular injury and death
Regulation of mitochondrial respiration
When it comes to endurance sports studies, throughout all of my research, a few caught my attention:
Cyclists (8 men) drinking beet juice regularly performed a moderate-intensity exercise task with 19 % less oxygen than those in the placebo group.3
The study of a high-altitude military trekking expedition (22 healthy adults) showed that dietary beet juice supplementation may alleviate the decline in altitude-related fitness and promote faster heart rate recovery.4
Beet juice supplements enhance the ability to generate explosive force and muscular endurance in women's lower limbs (14 physically active women).5
It feels like beets will be my best plate companions from now on… But before I wrap it up, it is essential to point out:
💊 Beets are not a miracle pill. Human studies examining beetroot supplementation have been limited in sample size—sometimes with only a handful of subjects, as observed in the three examples above. Note that the participants are often in excellent physical condition. I came across other scientific papers showing a less clear performance improvement, which may be influenced by the study protocols chosen and other variables. Overall, there seems to be a trend toward a better recovery between efforts and a better fatigue tolerance.
At any rate, Beetroot's abundance of flavonoids and polyphenolic components supports its significant anti-inflammatory and antioxidant capacities. 🏋️♀️ Bottom line: adding beets to your diet before your workout can only be a kicker.
Last but not least, how do you consume this precious veggie?6
🥤 Drink one or two glasses 45 minutes to 1 h before the workout or
🍽️ Eat cooked beets (3 whole ones) in a salad, for example
🏃♀️ Do you feel like hitting the road already?
Trail running diary
🫠“The choice was simple: find the inner strength to keep ascending one step at a time or call—in this case, shout—for help. The legs started giving up slowly as fuel reached the lowest bar. They were too heavy to haul up, or gravity was evilly showing me its existence. I had nothing left to eat and barely any water. A 200 m ascension followed by a 1500 m descent and about 10 km were still ahead of me. White peaks decorated the horizon. The view could have been breathtaking, but the eyes stared continuously at the rocky, uneven, steep Corsican terrain. Oxygen was no longer taking the ride with hemoglobin. Damn oxygen, I thought. Did it decide to take an Uber instead? Phew, I would have so liked to take an Uber….” 😂
👣 The first experience of ‘hitting the wall’ is unforgettable. Although my above paragraph ends with humor, I must admit it was harsh at the given moment. The motor did not pick up instantly after I received water and a snack bar from a running pal. The two lessons learned that day:
Manage your food and water intake properly before and during long runs (it means, in my case, greater than 20 km and 1000 m of altitude gain) 🍌🍏🫐🥥
Train your mind to endure when shit hits the fan 🤯
🥤From this day on, I started paying close attention to my food intake. Guess who crossed my reading path? Yes, you got it, red beets…
😱 By the way, I raced the same trail three weeks after this challenging episode. Surprisingly, I did it just fine (with snack bars and water, of course!). Did the beet juice make a real difference? I don’t have much experience to come to conclusions, but I assume it boosted me at a point — at least in my mind, it did. Hooray! I got 4th place in my category. 🤩
🌤️ I guess the body’s capacity will keep fascinating me for years as I progress.
🎯 Until the next post, stay focused.
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Tan M. L. et al., Beetroot as a Potential Functional Food for Cancer Chemoprevention, a Narrative Review, 2021 (link)
Jones A. M. et al., Dietary nitrate supplementation reduces the O2 cost of low-intensity exercise and enhances tolerance to high-intensity exercise in humans, 2009 (link)
Marshall A. R. et al., Marching to the Beet: The effect of dietary nitrate supplementation on high altitude exercise performance and adaptation during a military trekking expedition, 2021 (link)
My friend Gabi recommends beet juice with squeezed lime. Lime can also help with digestion and makes the juice even more powerful!
Great article Fe!
Nice! I've never tried it out but seems worth it