N=1 Experiment: Does Rhodiola Rosea Improve Exercise Performance?

I heard about rhodiola rosea as a potential exercise performance enhancer on a podcast. After looking deeper into it, I decided to give it a shot and test out if the claims and existing research on the topic would match my experience.

Some of the purported benefits included the following:

• reduction of stress and fatigue

• anti-depressant effect

• increase in strength and power

• decreased rate of perceived exertion (RPE) during exercise

Check out this overview and research summary by Examine for more details on the existing research and proposed mechanisms.

I ran an experiment for 126 days where each day was randomly assigned to either not take rhodiola rosea, or take 750mg rhodiola rosea extract. I used this product by Life Extension which contained 250mg rhodiola rosea extract, standardized to 3% rosavins and 1% salidrosides, per capsule. I would take one capsule first thing in the morning, followed by another around 11AM and the last one sometime in the afternoon.

My compliance with the schedule was 93% for a total of 118 experiment days, and the days where I was noncompliant were excluded from the results. I used data from a Whoop strap to track exercise related metrics and recorded subjective data with the Reflect - Track Anything app I’m developing, which I also used to set up the experiment schedule.

Here's what I found.

Subjective Effects

• 84% decrease in excessive daytime sleepiness (subjective rating)

• 43% decrease in fatigue (subjective rating)

• 4.4% increase in drive (subjective rating)

• 3.5% increase in focus (subjective rating)

• 6.1% increase in feeling relaxed (subjective rating)

Manual Workout Metrics

• 54% increase in jiu jitsu sparring time (manual time tracking)

• 12% decrease in RPE during jiu jitsu sparring (subjective rating)

Whoop Workout Metrics

• 1397% increase in zone 5 duration (Whoop)

  • Note: This looks like a huge number percentage wise, but it's a consequence of the fact that I barely ever reached zone 5 heart rate levels without rhodiola. The average zone 5 minutes per day was 0.02 min without rhodiola and 0.34 min with rhodiola

• 47% increase in zone 4 cardio duration (Whoop)

• 2.6% increase in average workout heart rate (Whoop)

• 3% increase in max workout heart rate (Whoop)

All of the cardio zone and heart rate results above contradicted my predictions in the experiment, and what I had read on Examine:

A decreased intensity of the stress response may decrease the heart rate response to exercise.

It seemed like instead of decreasing my heart rate during workouts, it made me able to operate at a higher percentage of my max heart rate for longer periods of time.

• 4.1% increase in total daily calorie expenditure (Whoop)

• 21% increase in workout calorie expenditure (Whoop)

• 16% increase in workout duration (Whoop)

Overall, my experience seemed to confirm rhodiola rosea's ability to act as an exercise performance enhancer. The fatigue reducing effects were much more significant than the stress reducing effects.