Beetroot juice fails to speed sprints in pooled trial data

Beetroot juice is one of the most popular natural performance supplements, prized as a rich source of dietary nitrate. Its proposed benefits for high-intensity intermittent exercise have made it a fixture in team-sport and sprint settings, yet whether it actually helps single or repeated sprints has remained unclear. Sprinting places extreme demands on power production over seconds rather than minutes, which is a very different challenge from the endurance settings where nitrate is usually discussed. This review set out to pool everything the trial literature says about beetroot juice and sprint-related performance.

The authors searched PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science for trials published from 2014 to June 2026 that compared beetroot juice with a placebo or control in healthy adults aged 18 to 40. The review followed PRISMA guidelines, with methodological quality and risk of bias assessed using the PEDro scale and the Cochrane RoB 2 tool, and certainty of evidence graded with GRADE. Twenty-three randomised trials involving 401 participants met the criteria, and 21 of them contributed data to the meta-analysis. Effects were expressed as standardised mean differences across sprint, neuromuscular, perceptual and physiological outcomes.

Beetroot juice improved time to peak power in four Wingate-based studies, a sizeable pooled effect, and also improved handgrip strength by a smaller margin. Beyond those two outcomes the picture was null: no significant effects emerged for countermovement jump, peak or mean power, 10 m or 20 m sprint performance, perceived exertion, heart rate or blood lactate. Sex did not significantly moderate the results, although data from female participants were limited. Certainty of the evidence was rated low for most outcomes and very low for 20 m sprint performance and blood lactate.

Beetroot juice arrived in sprint sports on the back of enthusiasm for dietary nitrate, but this pooled analysis suggests the benefits do not transfer cleanly to short, explosive efforts. The authors conclude the current evidence does not support its routine use to enhance short-distance or repeated-sprint performance. At the same time, the improvement in time to peak power hints that nitrate may influence how quickly power ramps up rather than how much is produced. Better trials, particularly ones including more women, are needed before either the nulls or the wins can be treated as settled.

If you take beetroot juice hoping to sprint faster or jump higher, this is a reason to temper expectations: across pooled trials, those outcomes did not improve. The one intriguing signal, reaching peak power sooner, might matter in efforts where the first second counts, but the evidence behind it is rated low certainty. Nothing here suggests harm, only that the sprint-specific hype has outrun the data. This is context for judging the supplement's claims, not a recommendation to start or stop anything.