Research

Mixed

Acute ingestion of 2.5g betaine prior to resistance exercise does not improve muscular endurance or total training volume in trained men.

Taking 2.5g of betaine one hour before your workout will not increase the number of reps you can perform or the total weight you lift in that session. If you want to try betaine, you likely need to take it daily for at least 10 days to allow muscle tissue saturation, rather than relying on a single pre-workout dose.

ModerateRefutesMEDIUM confidence
Acute betaine supplementation had no effect on muscular endurance performance in the bench press.
Matheus Dantas et al. · Journal of Trainology · 2021

Why this rating

Small sample size (n=10), pilot study design, lack of power calculation, and single exercise modality limit generalizability.

Source

Acute effect of betaine supplementation on muscular endurance during resistance exercise in trained men: a pilot and randomized study

Matheus Dantas et al. · Journal of Trainology · 2021

DOI 10.17338/trainology.10.2_25

crossover · n=10Cited 1×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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