Nitrate-rich beetroot supplementation has piqued scientists’ and athletes’ interest over recent years, due to its theoretical potential to enhance endurance performance.
However, confusion exists around who is most likely to experience benefits from nitrate-rich beetroot juice, and in what contexts these benefits may occur. Is our response impacted by training status, the type of event we compete in, genetics, or environmental factors?
In a research paper published in 2020, Dr. Stephen Bailey and colleagues set out to answer these questions. Dr. Bailey joins us on this episode of the Science of Getting faster Podcast to discuss the study’s insights and consider how nitrate-rich beetroot supplementation might help make you a faster cyclist.
I don’t know much about the beetroot thing, just curious as I am thinking there may be a parallel to meats advertised as “non-cured” etc (where they add a bunch of specifically fertilized nitrate rich dried celery juice powder in order to get a clean label declaration).
Aaaah, I’m sorry that we weren’t able to pique your interest. I want to make sure this is informative for as many athletes as possible.
The purpose of the Science of Getting Faster Podcast is to look at a single study in-depth, and we know this format might not be everyone’s cup of tea.
That being said, we are always open to your feedback.
Do you have any specific feedback that would have made this more interesting to you?
I’ve enjoyed all of these I’ve listened to, but I do have one request. The audio from the host is often way louder than that from the guest, which makes listening in the car…interesting. I have the volume cranked up to hear the guest, and when the host speaks it’s a thunder clap (albeit a very nice one).
I realize it’s challenging when the host is on a good audio recording setup, and the guest is on their lousy laptop mic, on a conferencing app, but a better leveling of the audio would be much appreciated.
Its my understanding that processed meats-lunchmeat, bologna, etc are treated with sodium nitrite, not nitrate, and that celery juice is a natural source of nitrite. There’s concern that nitrite is implicated in bowel cancer.
These notes are excellent as I can quickly scan/search to recall something I heard months or years ago. The show notes also include timestamps so I can quickly relisten to just that portion of the podcast.
Having that type of show notes would be very useful.
I haven’t listened to this episode, but I know that when TR covered this topic in the past, it basically came down to “caffeine or beet juice, pick one, and if it’s beets, be prepared to take in a LOT of them”…so maybe your sleeping is because you neglected your caffeine intake in favor of a massive bellyful of beets!
Haha! I’m NEVER without my caffeine! Sadly the voices of both of them was so monotone that is was hard to listen to. Guess I’m spoiled by Nate, Jonathan and Chad! They are far more dynamic. I found myself thinking how one of them would have spiced it up.
For sure! I’m going to work on adding some bullets to the forum post for the next Science of Getting Faster podcast. Thanks for the feedback guys- really appreciate it.
I’m trying to imagine what it would feel like to host a discussion I spent weeks working on to then have someone walk up to me and say “Hey, your voice was so monotone I found you hard to listen to”.
Helpful criticism is very important. If you listen to many podcasts you can see the growth as the cast goes on in time. One example is “The Move” or the previous named version. LA and the entire team was so green at first and worked on it to add personality and make it more dynamic. They even have admitted as much as have many I listen to (Greg Bennett, and some other cycling and Tri related casts). Trying to be helpful here in helping growth, some have natural skill and voice intonation; others need to hone that. Perhaps the sound variation others noticed had some to do with it, and not much one can do about an academic guest, but I’m trying to be helpful.
Problem is that beet root powder is disgusting. For strength training, I tried to do 5g of beet root powder in my preworkout, could stand it for about 5 days and tossed the bag. Tastes like drinking earth - even tried mixing it with various other products. Not as bad as something like creatine ethyl ester though.
Pills would obviously be preferable, but getting grams of beet root would be a lot of pills.
Beet juice is the way to go (Lakewood Organic in particular). I enjoy the taste and it actually has enough nitrates to hit the recommendations in the studies (very hard to do with powders). That said, it sounds like with a VO2 max of around 68 mL/kg/min I’m unlikely to be getting much of a benefit. I’ll probably stop spending the money after listening to this podcast. Seems like those with VO2 Max values in the 40s are likely to benefit.
