How Pre-Training Arugula and Spinach Can Improve Bar Velocity, Cycling Economy, and Repeated-Sprint Performance
Nitrate-rich greens can measurably improve power output and efficiency. Used correctly, arugula and spinach are a cheap, food-based way to support harder lifting and faster repeated efforts.
If you’ve ever hit the gym after a normal lunch and felt flat on your top sets, this matters: nitrate-rich vegetables can improve work output in the exact places serious athletes care about most. In controlled studies, nitrate intake has improved exercise efficiency, time-trial performance, and repeated high-intensity efforts, with some of the clearest effects seen in cycling and sprint-based tasks (Jones, 2018; McMahon et al., 2017).
Arugula and spinach are not magic. They are food-based nitrate tools. Used properly, they can raise nitric oxide availability, improve muscle contractile efficiency, and reduce the oxygen cost of submaximal work. That can translate into slightly better bar speed, better late-session output, and less performance drop-off across repeated efforts.
Why nitrate-rich greens work
Dietary nitrate follows a very specific pathway. You ingest nitrate, oral bacteria reduce it to nitrite, and then under the lower-oxygen conditions created by hard exercise, nitrite can be converted to nitric oxide (NO). Nitric oxide improves blood flow regulation, mitochondrial efficiency, and muscle contractile function (Lundberg et al., 2008; Jones, 2018).
That matters because exercise performance is often limited by the ability to produce force while keeping oxygen cost and fatigue in check. When nitrate works, it usually does not feel dramatic like caffeine. It shows up as slightly lower perceived effort, better economy, and better maintenance of output late in a session or race.
The key practical point: arugula and spinach are among the most nitrate-dense foods you can actually eat in meaningful amounts. Arugula can be especially high, often outperforming spinach on a nitrate-per-serving basis depending on growing conditions. Spinach is still highly useful because it is easy to buy, easy to blend, and easy to standardize.
What the evidence actually supports
The best-supported benefits are endurance economy and repeated high-intensity performance. In cyclists, nitrate supplementation has reduced the oxygen cost of submaximal exercise and improved time-trial performance in several studies (Lansley et al., 2011; Wylie et al., 2013). In team-sport and sprint contexts, nitrate has improved repeated-sprint ability or helped maintain performance across successive bouts, especially when fatigue is high (Cermak et al., 2012; Thompson et al., 2015).
For strength athletes, the data are less consistent, but there is a plausible performance payoff for bar velocity, rep quality, and training density. If nitrate improves contractile efficiency and lowers the metabolic cost of producing force, the practical result may be slightly better velocity on submaximal and near-maximal work, especially in exercises where local fatigue is the limiter rather than pure neural drive (Senefeld et al., 2020).
Do not oversell it. Nitrate is not a substitute for creatine, adequate carbs, or hard training. It is a targeted ergogenic aid that can add a small but real edge when the dosage, timing, and food source are right.
Arugula vs spinach: which is better?
Both work. Arugula is usually the more potent nitrate source per gram, which makes it efficient if you want a smaller volume of food. Spinach is more practical for shakes, omelets, and meal prep.
A useful way to think about them:
- Arugula: higher nitrate density, peppery taste, great in salads or blended with fruit.
- Spinach: slightly easier to eat in larger amounts, easy to standardize, and widely available.
Nitrate content varies with soil, season, storage, and cooking. That means you cannot rely on a precise nitrate dose from a random bunch of greens the way you can with a standardized beet shot. But you can still work with food if you use enough volume and repeat the protocol consistently.
A practical target from food is roughly 100 to 300 mg nitrate in a pre-training meal for a lighter effect, and 300 to 600+ mg for a stronger effect, depending on body size and tolerance. In food terms, that often means a large arugula salad or a substantial spinach serving combined with another nitrate source. Because food nitrate is variable, use repeated personal testing rather than chasing a perfect gram count.
Timing: when to eat it
The conversion from nitrate to nitrite and then to nitric oxide is not instantaneous. For most athletes, the best timing is 2 to 3 hours before training or competition, which aligns with the window where plasma nitrite tends to peak after ingestion (Jones, 2018).
That gives you three practical options:
1. Pre-session meal 2-3 hours out: best for a real performance session.
2. Split dose: one serving at lunch, one small serving 60-90 minutes pre-workout.
3. Chronic loading: daily intake for 3-6 days before an important block or event.
If you want the most repeatable effect, use the same timing for at least several exposures. Acute and short-term loading both work, but consistency matters more than novelty.
The best use cases for athletes
This is where nitrate-rich greens make the most sense.
1) Barbell training when rep speed matters
Use arugula or spinach before sessions built around explosive submaximal work: jump squats, dynamic effort bench, speed deadlifts, Olympic lift variations, and high-quality hypertrophy work where bar speed is a proxy for fatigue management.
Protocol:
- 2-3 hours pre-session
- Aim for a large serving of arugula or 2-4 cups of raw spinach blended into a meal or shake
- Pair with carbs and protein
- Keep the session output-focused: 3-6 sets of 2-5 reps at 50-80% 1RM, or 6-10 sets of 2-3 reps for speed work
The benefit is not that you suddenly lift heavier. The benefit is that you may maintain velocity a little better across later sets, which can improve total quality work.
2) Cycling intervals and time-trial work
Cyclists are the clearest winners from nitrate research. If you are doing threshold intervals, microbursts, or a race simulation, pre-training nitrate can improve economy and help you hold output with slightly less physiological strain (Lansley et al., 2011; Wylie et al., 2013).
Protocol:
- Eat nitrate-rich greens 2-3 hours before the ride
- For key sessions, repeat daily for 3-6 days
- Best use: 4x8 min at threshold, 5x5 min VO2 work, or 20-40 min steady time-trial efforts
- Combine with 1-2 g/kg carbs if the session is long or race-like
3) Repeated-sprint work and team-sport conditioning
Repeated-sprint ability is exactly where small efficiency gains can matter. If you’re doing sled pushes, court intervals, shuttles, or sprint repeats, nitrate may help preserve output across later efforts (Cermak et al., 2012).
Protocol:
- Preload 2-3 hours before
- Use a larger serving on the hardest day of the week
- Best sessions: 2-3 sets of 6-10 x 20-30 second efforts with short rest
- Keep total session quality high and watch whether later reps decay less
How to apply this
Use this as a simple weekly performance tool.
Option A: one-shot pre-training protocol
Use before your hardest session of the week:
- 2-3 hours before training
- Eat a meal containing either:
- 2-4 cups raw spinach, or
- a large arugula salad, roughly 50-100 g greens
- Include 30-60 g carbs and 25-40 g protein
- Avoid antiseptic mouthwash and antibacterial gum that day, because oral bacteria are required for nitrate conversion (Lundberg et al., 2008)
Option B: 3-day loading block
Use before a key competition, test week, or demanding training block:
- Days -3 to -1: one nitrate-rich greens serving daily
- Day 0: final serving 2-3 hours pre-event
- Keep the rest of the diet stable
- Use the same meal timing each day
Option C: training-week template
- Monday: normal eating
- Tuesday: pre-leg day spinach meal 2-3 hours before training
- Wednesday: normal eating
- Thursday: pre-interval ride or repeated-sprint session with arugula
- Friday: normal eating
- Saturday: pre-velocity upper-body or lower-body speed session with spinach
- Sunday: recovery day
Simple checklist
- Choose arugula for potency, spinach for convenience.
- Eat it 2-3 hours before the session.
- Pair it with carbs and protein, not as a stand-alone trick.
- Use it before sessions where output quality matters most.
- Test it in training before using it on race day.
Important limitations and mistakes
The most common mistake is underdosing. A few leaves in a salad will not reliably move performance. Another mistake is relying on cooked spinach in tiny servings; you need a meaningful amount. Also, mouthwash can blunt nitrate-to-nitrite conversion by disrupting oral bacteria, which can reduce the effect (Govoni et al., 2008).
Some athletes respond better than others. Trained athletes often show smaller but still meaningful benefits than untrained people, and the more fit you are, the more you should think in terms of marginal gains, not miracles (Jones, 2018). If your sleep, carbohydrate intake, and total training load are poor, nitrate will not rescue performance.
Bottom line for serious athletes
Pre-training arugula and spinach are not just “healthy veggies.” They are usable nitrate delivery systems. When timed correctly, they can improve cycling economy, support repeated-sprint performance, and help preserve bar speed during demanding sessions.
Use them before your most important work, eat enough to matter, and standardize the timing. The payoff is small, but in a well-trained athlete, small is often exactly what wins the session.