Beetroot juice has one of the better evidence bases in sports nutrition, and almost nobody reading about it is told the most important detail: how fit you already are decides how much it does.
The research on beetroot for exercise performance is real. Randomised trials, several meta-analyses, measurable changes in oxygen use and endurance. But the effect is not spread evenly. It shows up clearly in people who exercise recreationally and fades toward nothing in highly trained endurance athletes, which is the opposite of how most sports supplements are marketed.
So before asking whether beetroot works, the more useful question is where you sit on that gradient. The answer changes what you should expect and whether it is worth buying at all.
Goli fields more questions about beetroot and training than about almost any other ingredient, and not one of its ten billion gummies was marketed as a training aid.
The Short Answer
Beetroot for exercise performance works best in recreationally active people and least in elite endurance athletes. Meta-analyses show a small but real improvement in oxygen efficiency and time to exhaustion, measured with concentrated juice supplying 6.4 to 12.8 mmol of nitrate for at least three days. In highly trained athletes the effect is small enough to be uncertain.
The Training Status Gradient
Sorting the evidence by who was tested explains almost every contradiction in this literature.
Least trained: the largest effects. People who are sedentary, older, or managing a condition that limits exercise tolerance sit at the top of the gradient, since there is more room for a change in oxygen efficiency to matter. Researchers have tested beetroot juice in patients whose breathing limits how far they can walk on exactly that premise, though results in clinical groups vary more than in healthy recreational ones.
Recreationally active: consistent, modest effects. This is where most of the positive trials sit. A 2026 meta-analysis of beetroot juice and maximal oxygen uptake found a standardised effect of 0.38 in recreationally active participants, with the most consistent results at 6.4 to 12.8 mmol of nitrate taken for three days or more.
Trained: smaller and less reliable. Club-level athletes respond in some trials and not others. A registered trial in trained cyclists was built on an earlier finding of improved 10 km time trial performance after six days of loading, and set out to test whether a single dose three hours beforehand did the same.
Highly trained and elite: effect indistinguishable from zero. The same 2026 meta-analysis found an effect of 0.07 in highly trained athletes, with a confidence interval running from below zero to 0.23. Its authors described the evidence in this group as limited and uncertain, which is a careful way of saying it may not work at all.
That gradient is the single most useful fact about this supplement, and it is the one the marketing reliably leaves out.
Why Fitter Athletes Respond Less
Several explanations have been proposed, and they are not mutually exclusive.
The first is that trained muscle is already efficient. Endurance training builds mitochondrial density and oxidative capacity, so the improvement in oxygen efficiency that nitrate offers has less slack to take up.
The second involves muscle fibre type. Evidence mostly from animal studies, summarised in the high-intensity meta-analysis discussed below, suggests nitrate acts preferentially on type II fast-twitch fibres, which operate in lower-oxygen conditions where nitrite converts to nitric oxide more readily. Endurance-trained athletes rely more on type I slow-twitch fibres, so a smaller share of their working muscle is where nitrate appears to act.
The third is that elite athletes may already have higher baseline nitric oxide production, both from training and from diets rich in nitrate-containing vegetables. A viewpoint exchange in the Journal of Applied Physiology also raised a less obvious possibility: that at maximal cardiac output, nitric oxide dilating blood vessels in non-working tissue could divert oxygen away from the muscles that need it.
None of these has been settled. Together they explain why a supplement can be well supported and still pointless for somebody at the top of the gradient.
What Actually Changes, Measured
The outcomes matter as much as the population, because beetroot moves some measures and not others.
Oxygen cost of submaximal exercise. This is the most reproducible finding. At a given steady pace, people use slightly less oxygen after nitrate loading. A 2021 meta-analysis of endurance trials confirmed a reduction in submaximal oxygen uptake.
Time to exhaustion. Holding a fixed intensity until failure tends to improve, which fits the efficiency finding: using less oxygen at a pace means you can sustain it longer.
Time trials. Here the evidence weakens. The same 2021 meta-analysis found no significant difference in time trial performance, which is the measure that most resembles an actual race. Its authors also flagged a possible interaction with athletic level, while cautioning that subgroup findings of that kind can be spurious.
Short maximal efforts. A meta-analysis of high-intensity sprint and interval trials reviewed nitrate in brief, repeated bursts, where type II fibre recruitment is highest and the theoretical case is strongest. Results in that domain are more mixed than the endurance economy data. Newer work in college bodybuilders has pushed the question into sustained high-intensity contractions at 70 percent of one-rep max, on the reasoning that fast-twitch fibres are recruited more as intensity rises.
The distinction between time to exhaustion and time trials is worth holding onto. A lab test that measures how long you can hold a fixed pace is not the same as a race where you choose the pace, and beetroot does better on the first.
Three Beliefs Worth Correcting
These come up whenever beetroot and training are discussed together, and none of them is covered by the questions further down.
The first is that doubling the dose doubles the benefit. The most consistent results in the pooled data cluster between 6.4 and 12.8 mmol of nitrate, and going beyond that range has not been shown to add a proportional gain. More juice mostly means more of the side effects people dislike, such as stomach upset and red urine.
The second is that the effect keeps building the longer you take it. Loading for three or more consecutive days gave more consistent results than a single dose, but there is no evidence that months of daily use keeps pushing performance upward. The benefit appears to plateau once blood and muscle nitrate stores are topped up.
The third is that a salad does the same job. Leafy greens and beetroot itself do contain nitrate, and diet matters for baseline levels. Reaching the dose used in the trials from ordinary meals, though, means large daily portions of the highest-nitrate vegetables, which is possible and rarely what people are actually doing when they assume they are covered.
Using It in Three Moves
Three steps, in order, and the first decides whether the other two are worth doing.
Step One: Place Yourself on the Gradient
If you train recreationally, the evidence is reasonably in your favour. If you are a highly trained endurance athlete, expect little or nothing and treat any result as an individual experiment rather than a known quantity.
Step Two: Use a Product With a Stated Nitrate Dose
The trials used 6.4 to 12.8 mmol. Concentrated beetroot shots designed for sport usually state their nitrate content; most powders and capsules do not. If the label does not report nitrate, you cannot match the research.
Step Three: Load for Several Days and Test on a Measure You Trust
Three or more consecutive days gave the most consistent effects in the pooled data, and our piece on the best time to take beetroot covers the two-to-three-hour window before a session and why mouthwash can cancel it. Then compare on something repeatable, such as a fixed-pace effort you already know well, rather than on how a single session felt.
Realistic Expectations
Setting these correctly prevents most of the disappointment.
For a recreational athlete, the realistic outcome is a small improvement in how long you can hold a given effort and a slightly lower oxygen cost at a steady pace. That can be meaningful in a long event and nearly invisible in daily training.
For a highly trained athlete, the realistic outcome is probably nothing measurable, with a minority of individual responders that group averages cannot identify in advance. And nobody at any level should expect to feel it.
The individual responder question deserves a practical answer, because it is the one serious athletes ask. The only way to find out whether you respond is to test yourself properly: the same fixed-pace effort, on similar days, with and without a loading phase, repeated more than once. A single good session after a beetroot shot tells you very little, since day-to-day variation in sleep, fuelling and fatigue is larger than the effect you are looking for.
That is also why the gradient matters more than any single trial. It tells you the odds before you start, and for most recreational athletes those odds are reasonable while for most elite endurance athletes they are not.
Who Should Be Careful
A few considerations apply regardless of training level.
Anyone taking blood pressure medication should speak to a doctor before loading nitrate, since the pathway acts on the same system. Anyone with a history of calcium oxalate kidney stones should be cautious, since beetroot is high in oxalate. Red urine after beetroot is harmless and expected.
Beetroot is not a substitute for training, sleep or fuelling, all of which move performance by far more than a few percent. And because supplements are not assessed for effectiveness before sale, checking the nitrate content yourself is the only screening this category gets.
Beetroot for Exercise Performance: Your Questions Answered
Does beetroot juice actually improve exercise performance?
Yes, modestly, and mainly in recreationally active people. Meta-analyses show a reduction in the oxygen cost of steady exercise and improvements in time to exhaustion. Time trial performance, which is closer to a real race, shows little significant change in pooled data. In highly trained endurance athletes the effect is small enough that it may be zero.
How much beetroot juice should I take for performance?
The most consistent results came from doses supplying 6.4 to 12.8 mmol of nitrate, roughly 400 to 800 mg, taken for at least three consecutive days. That usually means one or two concentrated sport shots rather than ordinary beetroot juice, which is more dilute. Check the nitrate content on the label, since that is what the research measured.
Why doesn’t beetroot work for elite athletes?
Nobody knows for certain. Proposed explanations include already efficient trained muscle, a greater reliance on slow-twitch fibres where nitrate appears less active, higher baseline nitric oxide from training and diet, and possible diversion of blood flow at maximal effort. Some individual elite athletes may still respond, but group averages cannot predict who.
Is beetroot juice good for strength and sprint training?
The case is theoretically stronger for short, intense efforts, since nitrate appears to act preferentially on fast-twitch fibres. The measured results are more mixed than for endurance economy, with some trials finding faster time to peak power and others finding no change in peak or mean power output.
Can beetroot supplements replace beetroot juice for sport?
Not usually. Performance trials used concentrated juice at a stated nitrate dose, and most powders, capsules and gummies contain a small fraction of that without reporting it. Goli’s Beets Cardio gummies are built around CoQ10 rather than nitrate, so they are not a substitute for the juice used in sports research.
Will I feel a difference after taking beetroot?
Almost certainly not. The measured changes are a few percent in oxygen use, recorded with laboratory equipment. That can matter across a long event while being impossible to notice during a single session, so judge it on a repeatable timed effort rather than on feel.
Setting the Label Against the Sports Research
If the performance evidence belongs to concentrated juice at a nitrate dose, the honest thing to say about a beetroot gummy is where it sits relative to that research.
Goli Beets Cardio Gummies lead with CoQ10 at 100 milligrams, with beet root powder extract and Vitamin B12 alongside. The beetroot is not there at a nitrate dose, and nothing in this article’s performance research applies to them, which I would rather say than let the word beetroot borrow the sports evidence. What they offer is a CoQ10 product with beetroot in it, taken with a meal since CoQ10 absorbs better with some fat. A viewer asked during a Live whether she could swap her race-morning beetroot shot for these, and the answer was to keep the shot for the race. Ten billion gummies is mostly a record of daily doses, and daily intake is the only way CoQ10 has ever been studied. Compare it with your race shot.
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The Bottom Line
So beetroot for exercise performance is a real effect distributed unevenly. Recreational athletes see modest gains in efficiency and endurance. Elite endurance athletes see little that can be distinguished from nothing.
Today, place yourself honestly on that gradient before buying anything, because it predicts your result better than the product does.
Then use a stated nitrate dose for several days and test on a timed effort you already know. The CoQ10 gummy on Goli’s shelf was never meant to answer that question, and a company that could have sold ten billion of them on a performance promise chose to leave it off the label.
References
- Effects of Beetroot Juice Supplementation on Maximal Oxygen Uptake During Aerobic Exercise: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (2026). PROSPERO CRD420261414721.
- The Effects of Dietary Nitrate Supplementation on Endurance Exercise Performance and Cardiorespiratory Measures in Healthy Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (2021), doi 10.1186/s12970-021-00450-4.
- Effects of Dietary Nitrate Supplementation on Performance During Single and Repeated Bouts of Short-Duration High-Intensity Exercise: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials. Antioxidants, MDPI (2023);12(6):1194.
- Effects of Dietary Nitrate Supplementation on Isometric Performance and Physiological Responses in College Bodybuilders: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Crossover Study. Frontiers in Nutrition (2025), doi 10.3389/fnut.2025.1576712.
- Commentaries on Viewpoint: Can Elite Athletes Benefit From Dietary Nitrate Supplementation? Journal of Applied Physiology (2015), doi 10.1152/japplphysiol.00640.2015.
- Acute Nitrate Supplementation in Cyclists. ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT01384968.
- FDA 101: Dietary Supplements. U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
