Is Beetroot Juice the New Pre-Workout Supplement?
Champions of drinking beetroot juice before a workout claim it can improve blood and oxygen flow in your muscles, enhancing your performance and increasing your endurance. An all-natural, stimulant-free pre-workout supplement that helps you crush your exercise goals? Yes, please! But does it really work? Should you “beet” all in? Or tell the beets to beat it? And how many beet puns can I fit into one article?
I’ve been seeing these claims about beetroot juice floating around the internet for a while now. Personally, as long as it doesn’t sound dangerous or isn’t made of toxic chemicals, I love anything that promises to make my workout a little bit more bonkers. If I heard that eating chalk would make me a better athlete, you’d probably see me at the gym gnawing on a couple of sticks in between sets on the stair machine. But the beet juice thing actually sounded pretty solid. First off, it’s just beets. I’m always into anything that comes from whole foods, especially a veggie. Secondly, the benefit claims make sense.
Big Beet Benefits
Beets are rich in nitrates. Dietary nitrates (found in veggies like celery, spinach, arugula, lettuces, and beets) convert in the body to nitric oxide. Nitric oxide relaxes blood vessels, which is said to increase blood flow to working muscles. Increased blood flow means less fatigue, more endurance, and enhanced performance, whether you’re trying out that new twerking class or hanging out in the squat rack trying to pad out the seat of your Lululemons. Beet juice may even been lower blood pressure as some preliminary research suggests.
But a new study published recently in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism says that beetroot juice doesn’t really increase blood flow in working muscles, despite raising nitrate levels and relaxing the blood vessels.
So, are beets the bomb or more of a dud?
Obviously, I’m not going to let you risk pink poop for no reason! So, I hit up my local natural foods store to check out the beets, pound some juice, sweat my mascara up into my eyebrows, and report back to you.
I wanted to try making my own beetroot juice and a pre-made juice. If you have a juicer, go nuts; but here’s how I made the homemade version with my blender.
We used all organic ingredients for this recipe
Ingredients
- 1 Huge Raw Beet peeled and cubed
- 2 Apples peeled and cored
- 3 Ribs of Celery
- 1 Lemon juiced
- Ginger Root to taste peeled and grated
- 2 Cups Water
Preparation
- Throw everything in a high powered blender, like a Vitamix, and strain it through a fine mesh strainer.
