Why I Started Taking Beetroot Seriously This Year

You know what nobody tells you when you sign up for your first Hyrox class. They do not tell you that you will spend the first three minutes on the ski erg wondering what you have done to yourself. They do not tell you how humbling it feels to be the one at the back, catching your breath while everyone else seems to just keep going. And they definitely do not tell you how long it takes to be able to walk properly the next day.

But you also do not expect to fall in love with it the way you do.

The last few years have been a real shift for me. Building FUNCTNL has taught me more about my body, about ingredients, about what actually works, than anything else I have done. That knowledge started changing how I trained, how I ate, how I recovered. I got consistent in the gym. I challenged myself and started seeing what I was actually capable of. And the more I learnt, the more I wanted to push further.

Coming into 2026 I wanted a new target. Something that tested me in a different way. Hyrox kept coming up and honestly the more I looked at it the more it just made sense. Functional training, real effort, a format that actually mirrors what we stand for as a brand. It was not a hard decision. I signed up and got to work.

What Was Happening Behind the Scenes

While I was preparing for that first class, we were deep in the process of developing something new at FUNCTNL. We were looking for an ingredient that could support this kind of training. Something clean. No artificial spikes, no caffeine dependency, nothing that would leave you crashing an hour after you took it. It had to be natural, functional and actually backed by research.

Beetroot ticked every single box. The science on beetroot for endurance and performance is some of the most consistent in sports nutrition. It converts into nitric oxide in the body, which widens your blood vessels and improves blood flow to your working muscles. More oxygen getting to where it needs to go means better endurance, less early fatigue and the ability to keep pushing when the session gets hard. For Hyrox, where you are moving from station to station with no real rest, that is not a small thing. That is the difference between fading and finishing strong.

And because it is working through nitrates and oxygen delivery rather than stimulants, it does not matter when you take it. Pre workout, intra workout, post workout. There is no spike and no crash. It is just your body working better, which is exactly what we were looking for.

Then We Found Liposomal Beetroot and Took It a Step Further

Standard beetroot powder does the job but there is a ceiling on how much your body actually absorbs. A significant portion gets broken down in digestion before it ever reaches your bloodstream. Liposomal technology changes that. It wraps the active compounds in a lipid layer that protects them through the digestive process and delivers them directly into the bloodstream, which means significantly higher absorption and bioavailability. You are not just taking beetroot. You are actually getting it.

That is what we built FUNCTNL Liposomal Beetroot around. We then paired it with creatine to support power output and muscle recovery across those repeated efforts, and electrolytes to keep you hydrated and functioning properly when you are deep into a session and your body is working hard. No caffeine. No unnecessary stimulants. Just a clean, functional formula built around what your body genuinely needs to perform and recover.

This is not about being the fastest in the room. It is about being better than you were last week. Showing up when it is hard. Recovering properly so you can do it all again.

If you are getting into Hyrox, getting back into fitness, or just trying to build on something real in 2026, give The Performer a try. Pre, intra or post, it fits around you. Take it and let your body actually work with you for once