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How To Boost Performance Like Pro Athletes

tristenheath
Jun 12, 2016
2 min read

I'm sure you heard about the absolutely mental rise of Leicester City Football Club. They won the English Premier League title despite the 5,000 to 1 odds pinned against them. However, there's always more to a story like this, and Matt Reeves, the strength and conditioning coach at Leicester City, explained to us what exactly they did different that boosted their meteoric rise to the top.

One of the key ingredients to the players sprint performance and decision making, according to Matt Reeves, is their supplementation with beetroot juice. This is confirmed by a study done at the University of Exeter stating, “Drinking beetroot juice boosts your stamina and could help you exercise for up to 16% longer.” This is quite impressive considering the marginal difference in performance of even just 1% can result in whether or not Jamie Vardy gets to a cross before a defender to score the game winning goal.

With that being said, let's take a look at the actual science of how beets work. Beets contain a large amount of inorganic nitrates. These compounds are the precursor to an extremely important signalling molecule that our body needs to function called Nitric Oxide. NO is made naturally within our bodies but we can dramatically increase its availability by eating nitrate rich food. Among other roles, NO acts as a vasodilator in functioning skeletal muscle by increasing the size of blood vessels to allow more oxygen flow.

Since learning this game changing science, athletes have tried numerous ways to make this process more convenient. Juicing 3 to 5 beets every morning is not only time consuming and messy, but also expensive and impractical if you are traveling. Alternatives in the form of powder and concentrated juices are now widely available on the market. One of the best products we've found so far is the Healthy Skoop Ignite Organic Beet Shake . It's blended with organic beets, complex carbohydrates for energy, and pomegranate to make it easy on the stomach and mellow out the beet taste.