🩸🏃♂️Beetroot juice and CrossFit® performance
📈 For several years now, numerous studies have demonstrated that nitrates, in the form of beetroot juice, can enhance endurance performance.
🤔 How? The nitrate you ingest, for instance via concentrated beetroot juice, gets converted to nitrite by oral commensal bacteria in the mouth. Nitrites are subsequently further reduced to a gas called nitric oxide.
✅💰It is this nitric oxide that improves mechanical efficiency of the muscles; less oxygen is needed for a given amount of work. How this exactly happens is not entirely clear, but studies have shown that nitric oxide competes with oxygen as the final electron acceptor during oxidative phosphorylation. Secondly, nitric oxide dilates the vessels, which helps blood flow towards and from the muscle.
🤝 💪Interestingly, most studies showing any beneficial effects of nitrates have done so in endurance settings. Biking or running to exhaustion. Little is known in strength or more high-intensity athletes.
👀 This new study tackled this gap in knowledge and tested the effects of beetroot juice on back squat and wall ball performance in CrossFit® trained athletes. Results showed that the athletes performed better during max reps back squats with nitrates and not in max reps wall balls. Not sure why there is a discrepancy, but maybe the external load has something to do with it.
❗️Before you rush to your local grocery store to rack up the whole beetroot juice stack, remember that some juices are specifically reduced in nitrates. Therefore, It is better to purchase the concentrated beetroot juices that are designed for athletes (for instance beet-it).
Full reference: Vicente et al. Scientific Reports, 2022
--
Comments