Secret to better workout may be in your kitchen
Scientists: Drinking coffee before exercise can boost performance
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.
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 pre-race caffeine boost hit, Gaudreau 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 disagreement as to the exact mechanism by which caffeine affects exercise, 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’re playing for the NBA or just running through your neighborhood.
But it’s important to be aware of the potential downsides of caffeine consumption and to know how best to use it when working out.
How much of a boost can caffeine give?
Gaudreau wasn’t imagining the effect of her pre-race cup of coffee.
There’s a good consensus among scientists that caffeine gives an exercising edge, whether it’s 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% to 5%, 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), like 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 diet. Some see performance improvement above 5%, while others experience almost none.
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.
“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 show 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.
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 brewing method. So, two cups of coffee for a 150-pound person comes out to 1.3 milligrams per pound.
Side effects and breaks
Although 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, 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 aren’t competitive athletes, the benefit of caffeine might be more about going to the gym than performing well there. After all, if your cup of coffee is what gets you out of bed, that might be all the performance enhancement you need.