Does beetroot juice improve exercise performance?
A little, in some kinds of exercise. Reviews of many trials found a small gain, mostly in tests to exhaustion and in people who aren't trained athletes. Time trials and trained athletes showed little or no gain.
What the studies found
“nitrate salts supplementation was not as effective (P = 0.629) as ingestion via beetroot juice (P <0.001) or a high-nitrate diet (P = 0.005).”
“NO3 - supplementation did not enhance the performance of athletes (ES 0·04; 95 % CI -0·05, 0·15).”
“TTE trials had a small to moderate statistically significant effect in favour of dietary NO3- supplementation (ES = 0.33, 95 % Cl = 0.15-0.50, p < 0.01).”
The details
- What the trials used
- Nitrate from beetroot juice, nitrate-rich food or nitrate salts. The largest review found 5 to 14.9 mmol of nitrate, taken at least 150 minutes before exercise, worked best. These are the doses studied, not advice on what to take.
- Who was studied
- Healthy adults.
- Worth knowing
- TTE means time to exhaustion: how long people kept going at a set pace.
Before you try it
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How we checked this
This answer comes from one finding on our site, and that finding has been re-checked: each linked study was confirmed on PubMed and read against the finding’s grade, direction and study count. We then read every abstract ourselves on 7 November 2026 and wrote the answer from them, then checked it against recent reviews; the quotes above are copied word for word. If the finding changes, this answer is hidden until it is checked again. How we grade.