Beetroot Juice for Female Athletes: Power, Cycles, and Limits

Female athletes finally have an answer—just not a sweeping one

Beetroot juice may modestly improve power output in female athletes, but current evidence does not show reliable gains in sprint speed or maximal strength. That narrower conclusion matters because sports-supplement advice has long treated results from predominantly male studies as if they automatically applied to women.

A 2025 female-only systematic review and meta-analysis found a statistically significant improvement in power, with a standardized mean difference (SMD) of 0.38. That is a small effect, not a guarantee of a better jump, faster race, or winning performance on any given day. The same analysis found no reliable benefit for maximal strength or sprint performance. Its certainty rating was low to moderate because the individual trials were small, protocols differed, and researchers did not adequately account for menstrual-cycle phase.

The useful update is not that beetroot juice has suddenly become a universal answer for female performance. It is that the first sex-specific synthesis supports a limited use case: some power-focused athletes may benefit, while the broad claims borrowed from male-dominant research need trimming.

What the female-only evidence actually found

Meng et al.'s 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis restricted its analysis to randomized controlled trials in females. Across the pooled trials, nitrate supplementation improved power outcomes with an SMD of 0.38, and the result was statistically significant. The review found null pooled effects for maximal strength and sprint outcomes.

An SMD allows researchers to combine different power tests, such as jump-based or torque-based measures, on a common scale. It does not translate cleanly into a fixed number of centimeters on a countermovement jump or watts on a bike. More importantly, statistical significance does not tell an athlete whether the change is large enough to matter in her sport. The current result supports a modest average effect, with substantial uncertainty around who responds and under which conditions.

That pattern differs from the wider nitrate literature. A 2022 systematic review by Tan et al. reported more consistent benefits across explosive exercise outcomes in predominantly male or mixed-sex cohorts. A 2024 meta-analysis of high-intensity cycling sprint performance, also dominated by male or mixed samples, found an ergogenic sprint signal that the female-only analysis did not reproduce. Those comparisons do not prove that sex alone explains every difference; training status, test choice, dose, and study design also vary. They do show why a male-heavy average should not be treated as female-specific evidence.

A broader 2025 umbrella review of beetroot juice and physical performance likewise supports performance benefits across professional athletes and healthy people, but it does not provide the sex-stratified evidence needed to settle the question for female power athletes.

Why the menstrual cycle may change the result

Menstrual-cycle phase may be one reason the female trials point in different directions. Fry et al. 2026 directly examined dietary nitrate and muscle contractile function in women and found that effects varied by menstrual-cycle phase. That is an important result because none of the trials included in the 2025 female-only meta-analysis formally controlled cycle phase or documented hormonal-contraceptive use at testing visits.

This does not justify a precise cycle-based nitrate protocol yet. The study establishes phase-dependent contractile outcomes, but the available evidence does not provide a validated dose, timing rule, or performance guarantee for a particular phase. It does mean that a pooled estimate may blend athletes tested in biologically different hormonal states.

The most plausible interpretation is intramuscular rather than purely vascular. Nitrate can contribute to nitric-oxide production and may affect calcium handling and excitation-contraction coupling, processes that influence explosive muscle work. But Williams et al. 2024 found that natural menstrual and oral-contraceptive-pill cycles minimally influenced vascular function and related cellular regulation in premenopausal females. Together, the findings point toward muscle contractile pathways as a candidate explanation for cycle-related differences, not proof that blood-vessel changes drive them.

Sex differences in nitrate responsiveness also appear outside power testing. Ortiz de Zevallos et al. 2023 found different responses between males and females for exercise economy and endurance capacity in healthy young adults. That study did not test power, sprint, or strength, so it cannot explain the female power meta-analysis by itself. It does make a one-size-fits-all nitrate story less convincing.

Two well-designed female trials found no performance benefit

The pooled power result should be read alongside two direct null trials. In female team-sport athletes, Tan et al. 2024 tested acute inorganic nitrate ingestion and found no improvement in high-intensity sprint or explosive exercise performance. The trial also found no change in oral microbial composition. Oral bacteria help convert nitrate to nitrite, an early step in the nitrate-to-nitric-oxide pathway, but this result does not establish why performance failed to improve in that group.

In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of elite female hockey players, López-Samanes et al. 2023 found no improvement in neuromuscular performance or match-play explosive demands after beetroot juice ingestion. This trial matters because it tested an elite, sport-specific setting rather than a laboratory outcome alone. Its null result does not erase a small pooled power effect, but it limits any claim that beetroot juice reliably improves explosive performance in elite team sport.

Differences among studies are not a nuisance to ignore; they are the central issue. Trials varied in nitrate source, dose, timing, and outcome measures. Some used concentrated beetroot juice, while others used nitrate salts. A jump test, an isokinetic torque test, a repeated-sprint protocol, and a match-play workload do not ask the body the same question. Small samples magnify the chance that real but modest effects—or ordinary random variation—will look larger than they are.

What a practical trial can look like

For an athlete who wants to test beetroot juice, the evidence-based starting range is 6 to 13 mmol of nitrate taken two to three hours before an explosive event. That commonly corresponds to one or two 70 mL concentrated beetroot-juice shots when each shot has a verified nitrate content of about 6.4 mmol. Product labels vary, so a label that lists beetroot ingredients without quantified nitrate content provides less useful information.

• Test it in training before using it in competition.
• Use the same product, dose, pre-exercise meal, warm-up, and performance test each time.
• Track a power-relevant outcome, such as repeated jump performance or a sport-specific explosive drill, rather than relying on how energized you feel.
• Avoid antiseptic mouthwash for 12 to 24 hours before supplementation because it can disrupt the oral bacteria needed for nitrate-to-nitrite conversion.
• Record cycle phase and hormonal-contraceptive status. This will not prove a personal mechanism, but it can reveal whether apparent responses cluster under similar conditions.

There is no female-specific evidence that multiday loading improves power. Muñoz et al. 2025 found selective neuromuscular improvements after multiday beetroot juice ingestion in 12 semi-professional male handball players in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study. That result is interesting, but it is not a loading recommendation for women.

Current evidence supports beetroot juice as a reasonable experiment for female athletes whose performance depends on explosive power. It does not support expecting reliable gains in maximal strength or sprint speed.

The bottom line

Female athletes do not need to discard beetroot juice, but they should lower the claims to the size of the evidence. The best female-only estimate is a small, statistically significant improvement in power, with low-to-moderate certainty. Sprint and maximal-strength benefits remain unsupported. Menstrual-cycle phase may modify muscle responses, yet the research cannot tell athletes exactly when to take nitrate for the best result.

For a power athlete, a standardized training trial with a verified product is sensible. For an athlete chasing a faster sprint or a bigger one-repetition maximum, beetroot juice currently offers more marketing confidence than female-specific evidence.