For two years, Steph Gaudreau gave
up her daily cup of coffee. She switched to large mugs of herbal tea — not
because caffeine was affecting her sleep or making her anxious, but to gain an
edge in cross-country mountain bike racing.
اضافة اعلان
Hoping to enhance the effect of caffeine as
a performance aid, Gaudreau, who lives in San Diego, drank a cup of coffee on
race day as she warmed up. Once that prerace caffeine boost hit, Gaudreau, now
a nutritional therapy practitioner and strength coach, said she felt a sense of
euphoria, which helped her feel focused and mentally prepared for her race. The
strategy paid off. In 2010, she took first place in a regional amateur biking
race called the Kenda Cup.
Caffeine is the most widely consumed
psychoactive substance in the world and one of the best studied. Scientists
have been looking at caffeine’s effect on athletics since the 1900s.
Although there is still some disagreement
as to the exact mechanism by which caffeine consumption affects exercise
performance, and whether taking a break from it until game day can give you an
edge, scientists agree that a cup of coffee before working out can improve
performance, whether you are playing for the NBA or just running through your
neighborhood.
“Caffeine enhances the ability for muscles to contract at a greater rate and thus would conceivably create greater power.”
However, it is important to be aware of the
potential downsides of caffeine consumption and to know how best to use it to
your advantage when working out.
How much of a boost can caffeine give?Gaudreau was not imagining the effect of
her prerace cup of coffee. There is a good consensus among scientists that
caffeine gives an exercising edge, whether it is running a marathon, lifting
weights, or playing soccer, said Nanci Guest, a dietitian, coach, and researcher
at the University of Toronto who led a comprehensive review in 2021 of caffeine
and exercise.
Whether consumed via coffee, a workout
supplement, or an energy drink, caffeine tends to improve performance by an
average of 2 percent to 5 percent, said Brad Schoenfeld, a professor of
exercise science at the Lehman College in the New York City borough of the
Bronx and director of the school’s human performance and fitness program.
Although caffeine moderately improves
anaerobic activities (intense, shorter workouts), such as weightlifting,
sprinting, and high-intensity interval training, it appears to show the most
benefit with aerobic efforts (less-intense, longer exercises), such as
swimming, cycling, and jogging.
For instance, a 2020 analysis of multiple studies
about the effect of caffeine on rowing performance found that competitive
rowers improved their time on a 2,000-meter row by about 4 seconds when using
caffeine.
“It takes a lot of work to drop your
2,000-meter row, if you’ve been training for a couple of years,” said Mike
Nelson, an associate professor at the Carrick Institute for Clinical
Neuroscience. “But if you said, ‘Hey, just take this supplement and we can
decrease your time instantly by 4 seconds,’ I’m going to take the supplement.”
This response to caffeine varies from
person to person, depending on factors such as genetics, sex, hormonal
activity, and even diet. Some see performance improvement above 5 percent,
while others experience almost none.
“There’s fast metabolizers of caffeine and
slow metabolizers of caffeine,” Nelson said.
How does it work?Caffeine’s influence on our nervous system
starts with adenosine, a neurotransmitter that binds to specific receptors and
makes us feel drowsy. Caffeine binds to those same receptors, blocking the
adenosine from working.
Whether physical or mental, the benefits of caffeine apply to competitive athletes and those just wanting a slight improvement in their workout.
“When caffeine blocks that receptor, the
result is a stimulating effect,” Guest said. This, in turn, releases other
hormones such as dopamine and epinephrine, which are related to mood, focus and
alertness.
Some studies have shown that caffeine also
helps our muscles produce more force. Our body needs calcium to initiate muscle
contractions, and caffeine helps mobilize calcium ions so they have a greater
interaction with the filaments that induce muscle fiber contractions.
“Caffeine enhances the ability for muscles
to contract at a greater rate and thus would conceivably create greater power,”
Schoenfeld said.
Other studies show another powerful force
at work: the placebo effect. If we expect caffeine to help us perform better,
that may be enough. In one small study, competitive sprinters performed just as
well with caffeine as they did with a placebo, as long as they had been told
they ingested caffeine. When the athletes were told they had been given a
placebo, they ran more slowly, even if they had actually been given caffeine.
How should you use caffeine to help your
athletic performance?
Whether physical or mental, the benefits of
caffeine apply to competitive athletes and those just wanting a slight
improvement in their workout. One study found that caffeine improved the 5K
times of well-trained runners by 11 seconds and recreational runners by 12
seconds.
“To the elite or high-level athlete, it’s
going to mean a lot,” Nelson said.
Studies show that the ideal performance-enhancing
dose ranges from 1.4 to 2.7 milligrams per pound of body mass (although some
research shows that even lower doses can work).
For instance, an 8-ounce cup of coffee has
about 100 milligrams of caffeine, although this can vary depending on the type
of coffee and the method of brewing. So, two cups of coffee for a 150-pound
(68-kg) person comes out to 1.3 milligrams per pound.
Side effects and tolerance breaksAlthough caffeine can help your exercise
performance, it does have some adverse effects.
“If your performance involves fine motor
skills, anecdotally, those people tend to do worse,” Nelson said.
If you drink coffee late in the day to help
your evening workout, you may be disrupting your sleep.
“People underestimate the value of sleep,”
Guest said. Whatever performance gains that caffeine is giving you could be
nullified if you are experiencing chronic sleep deprivation. Caffeine also has
other side effects for some people, including nervousness, anxiety, and
increased blood pressure.
If caffeine does worsen your sleep, Guest
recommended taking it about 8 to 12 hours before bedtime, depending how quickly
your body metabolizes the chemical.
For people who are not competitive
athletes, the benefit of caffeine might be more about going to the gym than
performing well there. After all, if your morning cup of coffee is what gets
you out of bed, that might be all the performance enhancement you need.
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