The effect of β-alanine supplementation on cycling time trials of different length

Abstract

The varying results reported in response to β-alanine supplementation may be related to the duration and nature of the exercise protocol employed. We investigated the effects of β-alanine supplementation on a wide range of cycling performance tests in order to produce a clear concise set of criteria for its efficacy. Fourteen trained cyclists (Age = 24.8 ± 6.7 years; VO_2max = 65.4 ± 10.2 mL·kg·min⁻¹) participated in this placebo-controlled, double-blind study. Prior to supplementation, subjects completed two (familiarization and baseline) supramaximal cycling bouts until exhaustion (120% pre-supplementation VO_2max) and two 1-, 4- and 10-km cycling time trial (TT). Subjects then supplemented orally for 4 weeks with 6.4 g/d placebo or β-alanine and repeated the battery of performance tests. Blood lactate was measured pre-exercise, post-exercise and 5  min post-exercise. β-alanine supplementation elicited significant increases in time to exhaustion (TTE) (17.6 ± 11.5 s; p = 0.013, effect compared with placebo) and was likely to be beneficial to 4-km TT performance time (−7.8 ± 8.1 s; 94% likelihood), despite not being statistically different (p = 0.060). Performance times in the 1- and 10-km TT were not affected by treatment. For the highly trained cyclists in the current study, β-alanine supplementation significantly extended supramaximal cycling TTE and may have provided a worthwhile improvement to 4-km TT performance. However, 1- and 10-km cycling TT performance appears to be unaffected by β-alanine supplementation.

Keywords:

• Carnosine
• buffer
• supplement
• cycling

Acknowledgements

Both authors were responsible for the conception, design, data collection, data analysis and data interpretation of the study and writing the manuscript. The authors declared no conflict of interest. Authors thank the cyclists for their participation in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

There were no external funding sources for this work.