Beetroot juice for virtual cycling - placebo, performance or powerless 🧐
Is the juice worth the squeeze?
Physiological and Placebo Effects of Beetroot Juice in Virtual Cycling Using the Balanced Placebo Design
Study Details
This new study recruited 67 trained cyclists to perform a 20-min virtual cycling time trial after taking either…
🍷 Beetroot juice (550 mg nitrate)
🥤 Placebo (nitrate-free beetroot juice)
To investigate potential placebo effects further, participants were split into one of four groups…
1️⃣ Informed beetroot / given beetroot
2️⃣ Informed beetroot / given placebo
3️⃣ Informed placebo / given beetroot
4️⃣ Informed placebo / given placebo
Here is what they found ⬇️
Key Findings
There were no differences between groups for time-trial power output ❌
Plus no differences between conditions for…
❌ Relative power
❌ Speed
❌ Distance
❌ Heart rate
❌ Cadence
Further analysis revealed that neither the expectation, actual supplementation, or the interaction between expectation and supplement influenced results 🤷♂️
Conclusion
An acute dose of beetroot juice doesn’t improve short time trial performance 🙅♂️
Higher doses or chronic supplementation may be required 📈
For short, sharp sessions, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze‼️
Reference
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02701367.2026.2625878#abstract
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