Each week in my Research Update, I distill the latest sports science research into practical insights to help you improve your training, performance, and recovery.
In this week's update:
- Why tart cherry juice is gaining traction as a recovery tool
- How creatine, carbs, and protein support repeated sprint power
-
Where beet juice won’t help improve your performance
Why Tart Cherry Juice is Gaining Traction as a Recovery Tool
This review examined whether tart cherry juice helps athletes recover from exercise-induced muscle damage. Across multiple studies, the authors found that tart cherry supplementation can improve recovery markers after strenuous exercise, particularly by reducing soreness and helping restore muscle function. This is likely due to tart cherry’s rich polyphenol and anthocyanin content, which may help reduce excess inflammation and oxidative stress after demanding sessions. Benefits were most prominent after hard training blocks or competitions that create high levels of muscle damage, rather than light, everyday sessions. The findings support tart cherry supplementation as a useful recovery tool when used strategically around demanding efforts.
My thoughts: Tart cherry is having its moment in the endurance market. Helping your body recover from hard training is an art form, and proactively using sports nutrition products like Beet It Regen Cherry+ to help you is an underused approach. I hope this data makes more athletes think beyond fuelling during training and start taking recovery support more seriously.
Does Combining Creatine, Carbs, and Protein Improve Repeated Sprint Power?
This study tested whether combining creatine with carbohydrates and protein improved repeated high-intensity sprint performance. Sixty active men completed three 30-second Wingate bike sprints before and after a four-day loading protocol. Compared with baseline, the creatine + carbohydrate and creatine + carbohydrate + protein groups improved mean power output across repeated sprints, while a placebo group’s performance dropped in later efforts. All supplemented groups improved peak power, but the combined supplementation strategies appeared most helpful for maintaining output as fatigue built.
My thoughts: This is useful because it reflects how many real sports actually work: repeated hard efforts with incomplete recovery. Creatine remains a foundation, but pairing it with carbs (and in some cases protein) may help you hold power longer and aid in recovery.
We often talk about creatine as part of a bigger performance stack, and pairing HMB with creatine is another example of how smart supplementation combinations can outperform single ingredients used in isolation.
The Times Where Beet Juice Won’t Help Improve Your performance
This study tested whether a single dose of nitrate-rich beetroot juice improved performance during explosive lifts in 18 resistance-trained women. They consumed either nitrate-rich or nitrate-depleted beetroot juice 2.5 hours before completing barbell back squats and bench press at 55%, 60%, and 65% of 1RM. Researchers measured peak power, mean power, and velocity during the lifts. Beetroot juice did not improve squat or bench press performance, and some bench press results were actually slightly worse before statistical correction. Overall, the conclusion was that acute nitrate supplementation did not enhance resistance exercise performance in this setting.
My thoughts: The strongest science for beetroot juice and strategically-dosed products like Beet It Sport Nitrate 400 is still largely in endurance and repeated sprint performance. This study doesn’t undo that, but what it does show is that applying the same strategy to lifting and resistance training may not be as straightforward. It also highlights an important issue: current nitrate dosing guidelines were built largely from early endurance research in men, so applying the same rules to women and lifting performance may be too simple of an approach.
That’s all for this week.
If you learned something new and are curious to know more, check out more articles and my growing list of weekly Blonyx Research Updates where I help you further improve your athletic performance by keeping you up to date on the latest findings from the world of sports science.
— That's all for now, train hard!
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