For years, the type of ‘juicing’ professional cyclists were infamous for related to the industrial level of doping that went on. These days, the word might be more associated with a far more benign use in the peloton, however.
Juices – beetroot, tart cherry and pickle, to name a few – have become commonplace amongst pro cyclists (and indeed the wider world of endurance sport) for their performance-enhancing effects, whether as a primer before activity, during a race or training session itself, or as a recovery aid.
That the products are natural only adds to their appeal – and there's a new kid on the block: broccoli sprout juice.
Juice power
Beetroot juice became popular in endurance sport around 15 years ago; the nitrates in beetroot are converted to nitric oxide (NO) in the body, a naturally occurring substance that increases blood flow and reduces the oxygen cost of exercise.
Tart cherry juice is widely used in pro cycling in 2025, with seemingly the entire peloton chugging back a bottle of the red stuff on the finish line of stage races such as the Tour de France.
Since the early 2000s, it has been known for its anti-inflammatory properties. Anthocyanins (an antioxidant that gives the cherry its red colour) present in abundance in a particular variety, Montmorency tart cherries, can aid recovery between stages.
Green scene
Nomio is a Swedish company, co-owned by scientists. One interesting quirk of the company is some of the scientists influential in beetroot’s effects on exercise have links to it.
Eddie Weitzberg and Jon Lundberg, who work as advisors to Nomio, led research (and continue to do so) at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm on the effects of nitric oxide on the body, and in 2009 Filip Larsen joined their research as a master’s student, followed five years later by Michaela Sundqvist as a PhD student.
Larsen moved to the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences (GIH), where he started work on isothiocyanates (ITC) and exercise adaptations, with the first study published in 2023. Sundqvist joined him in 2021.
How it works
So, isothiocyanates. “Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?” Emil Sjölander, one of the company’s co-founders, says down the line from his Stockholm office, explaining his new product.
Shortened to ITCs, they are the active component of a Nomio shot, which contains concentrated broccoli sprout juice, lemon juice and sugar. ITCs are chemicals found in broccoli, and also kale, cauliflower and rocket.
Away from his day job as a physiologist at GIH, Larsen is a former triathlete and now ultra-marathon runner.
His primary interests have been in the area of mitochondrial damage in overtraining, the point at which the stimulus of training starts to attack and break down the body.
He made discoveries around the impact of nrf2, an amino-acid like substance with signalling properties in cells that regulates oxidative and other stress in the body.
“nrf2 contributes to keeping that stress at a manageable level,” says Sjölander. “When you go past a certain point of training, in volume or intensity, you get into a zone where the body can't keep up and nrf2 gets [less effective] and the body can't keep up with the stress anymore.
“You have free radicals all over the body, destroying your muscles and destroying mitochondria, and you take massive leaps backwards actually from that training.”
ITCs activate nrf2, preparing the body to manage physical stress during exercise.
Larsen’s research on ITCs as natural performance enhancers found, across multiple studies, that they reduced blood lactate by 12.7% (the presence of which can be an indicator of muscle fatigue), reduced oxidative stress and inflammation by 13%, and led to better recovery after exercise.
In short, it allows cyclists, or any endurance athlete, to fatigue later and to preserve energy for further on in a race.
Super shot
The finished product is a 60ml shot of ITCs, produced using broccoli sprouts – young broccoli – that works out at the equivalent of 3kg of fully-grown broccoli. That's an awful lot and explains why among the owners of Nomio is a farmer.
“The entire supply chain, all of the knowledge, everything, is essentially in-house. So the farmer helps us grow the broccoli sprouts, we have the researchers who further the science and the marketing team talking to customers.”
The product was released to the public in early 2025, which was some years both after the research started in 2015 and when the scientists started “dabbling with some sort of structure in 2021. They were about to put everything to rest, because they’re scientists, right? They like research!” says Sjölander.
All about lactates
The tight-knit structure of Nomio extends to Sjölander himself. His girlfriend’s father is one of the scientists mentioned earlier who discovered the benefits of nitric oxide and beetroot juice on exercise – and when he heard about ITCs, his ears pricked up at the idea of ‘lactate reducing’.
He’s an endurance runner and says anyone involved in Nordic endurance who’s serious about their sport knows about lactate and lactic acid as a measure of their level.
“I was thinking, ‘the best in the world are measuring this thing and we have a compound that lowers lactate’ – this must be revolutionary for people within endurance.”
Revolutionary might be a touch strong – like many such innovations, Nomio is working at the margins of sport, where such margins matter.
Lidl-Trek’s star rider, Mads Pedersen, was introduced to it by his coach in the spring and it was part of his arsenal as he won Gent-Wevelgem for the second year running. Quotes from the Dane are on Nomio’s website:
"With Nomio, I feel completely different on the bike. During Gent-Wevelgem, I hit a 90-minute all-time best at 400W. The craziest part is that even when I went all out, I was still able to recover quickly after every climb."
Nomio say the ideal time to take the shot is three hours before your session. Between 30 and 90 minutes after taking it, ITCs work to reduce the levels of glutathione – which is your defence against stress.
This triggers over-production. Three hours after taking the shot, glutathione is significantly above baseline, increasing your ability to handle difficult exercise.
How does Sjölander explain the popularity of juices among elite athletes? “I think for pros and especially in cycling, you have a history of doping, of people breaching the boundary of what’s allowed within the rules to up their performance.
“Now it’s more about what’s possible to do within legal means. And I think the interest is high [in products] found in the natural kingdom that have a positive impact on performance.”
It goes some way to explaining the current trend for legal supplements that naturally occur in the human body.
- Read more: Vitamins are a $146 billion industry, but here's what the science says you should be taking
Natural enhancers
Caffeine, creatine, sodium bicarbonate, beta-alanine and nitrate have been approved by the International Olympic Committee as natural, legal performance enhancers.
Sjölander insists we shouldn’t think of a Nomio shot as some sort of ‘1 of your 5 a day’ type health supplement, despite its concentrated broccoli make-up, though.
“Our recommendation is not to take it every day. ITCs are an active compound, it's not like a vitamin, for example, or things that are an inherent part of how your body functions.
"Nitrate exists in your body, it produces it, so when you drink beetroot juice, what you help is essentially your body to boost the production of nitric oxide,” he says.
“But this is something entirely alien for your body and what you get is an effect which sharpens your body and prepares It for performance.
"It accelerates systems that are used to protect yourself against pollution or invasive toxins, or things like that.
"These systems are activated when you take this drink. Even though we haven't seen any negative side effects, we're slightly cautious about daily use.”
That’s not to say Pedersen wouldn’t be taking it every day in a Grand Tour. Sjölander says he would probably take two a day, before and after a stage. “But in the cooldown phases between tours, he’s not going to take it as much.”
Nomio is still in its infancy, but having launched the product in the USA recently, Sjölander says a big tangible goal for the company is that “when we go to the LA Olympics in 2028, we want everyone who’s in anything that resembles an endurance sport to be using our product.”
Aside from Pedersen, numerous professional endurance athletes from worlds as varied as trail running, marathon, orienteering and XC skiing have endorsed it, says Sjölander. “I think there's already a lot of people who are using it, so the goal doesn't seem so unrealistic anymore.”
