Beetroot juice helps endurance a little — and least for the fittest athletes
Pooled trials show a small boost to oxygen uptake and exercise tolerance from dietary nitrate. The effect shrinks toward zero in the most trained athletes.
VO2 max is fitness culture's favourite number. Four 2026 studies test what it establishes.
A sibling-controlled cohort of 1.1 million men, a genetic analysis of 712 traits and a UK Biobank study of fitness change converge — and they agree on where the exception is.
Stopping training does not erase its benefits at the speed gym lore assumes
A 2026 meta-analysis of 86 randomised trials found body mass, waist circumference and maximal oxygen uptake still better than baseline more than six months after training stopped. Not everything held.
The endurance training argument has a Bayesian answer, and it is 'no clear winner'
A network meta-analysis compared the ways athletes split training across intensity zones. Every credible interval crossed zero — and the model ranked first for aerobic capacity was not the popular one.
The Apple Watch VO2 max estimate got fitness percentiles right for 1 in 7 people
Against a laboratory gas-exchange test, the Series 10 underestimated VO2 max by about 6 mL/kg/min on average, with wide limits of agreement. It reads trends better than absolute numbers.