Research
Beetroot juice just hit 12% more peak power in a new Wingate study
Written by
Tom Strangwick
A 2026 paper in Scientific Reports tested what happens when trained athletes drink 140ml of beetroot juice before an all-out sprint.
Peak power went up by roughly 12% (720W → 803W, p=0.002). Mean power climbed too. Muscle oxygenation improved.
Not bad for a vegetable.
What the study did
Trained male football players took 140ml of concentrated beetroot juice (12.8mmol of dietary nitrate) roughly 2 hours before a Wingate test. The Wingate is 30 seconds of maximal effort on a stationary bike, so there's nowhere to hide.
They repeated the same session on placebo.
Results on the beetroot day:
Peak power up 12% (720W → 803W, p=0.002)
Higher mean power across the full 30 seconds
Better muscle oxygenation (more O2 reaching working tissue)
One dose. No loading protocol needed to see the effect.
Why nitrates do this
Dietary nitrate gets reduced to nitrite in your mouth, then to nitric oxide (NO) in your blood.
NO widens your vessels, improves oxygen delivery, and lets your mitochondria produce ATP more efficiently under load. Translation: more watts per breath.
Betalains (the pigment that turns your fingers pink) add an antioxidant layer on top.
No caffeine spike. No itching. No crash.
How to dose it
The study used 12.8mmol of nitrate. In practice, that's:
One Pre-shot, or
Around 500ml of standard beetroot juice, or
A big bowl of roasted beetroot (less practical pre-race)
Where this fits for Hyrox and endurance athletes
Hyrox is roughly 50% running by time, with 8 stations of high-power efforts stacked between. Nitrates help on both sides: oxygen economy on the run splits, peak power on the sled.
The mechanism also stacks cleanly with caffeine. Nitrate handles vascular efficiency, caffeine handles CNS drive. Different pathways, same session.
For endurance athletes racing longer than 60 minutes, the running-economy effect (roughly 3 to 5% reduced oxygen cost at submaximal pace) is usually the bigger story than peak power.