Today we discuss the science behind caffeine and endurance time trial performance. Let everyone know how your experiences with caffeine have gone thus far in the comments below.
Caffeine is a widely used stimulant that athletes have been using as a performance enhancing drug for decades however does the scientific literature support that caffeine improves endurance performance there are several further questions you’ve probably asked yourself which are also important to applying caffeine in training practices these are how much
Caffeine should i take and how long before exercise do i need to take it to begin our inquiry we need to understand the hierarchy of scientific evidence science can be ranked in terms of the strength of evidence the higher up we go on the evidence pyramid the more confident we can be in the study’s findings at the top we can see that the highest rank evidence
Is a meta-analysis slash systematic review a systematic review is essentially a large review where a group of scientists review all the studies published on a particular topic and collect the findings into one big picture a meta-analysis is an additional part of a systematic review where if possible they analyze the findings of all the studies to see an
Overall effect of a particular intervention therefore if there are any systematic views and or meta-analyses on the effect of caffeine on endurance performance this is the best place for us to start thankfully in 2018 a group of scientists published this systematic review and meta-analysis on the effect of acute caffeine ingestion on endurance performance the
Scientists found 44 individual studies looking at the effect of caffeine on endurance performance most studies investigate the effect of caffeine on time trial performance specifically in running or cycling if we take a look at the study populations reviewed we can see that the number of participants that took part in these studies totaled 1001 however only
82 were female or 8 percent of the sample therefore these data largely reflect the response of caffeine on males we can see from the age of the participants that they were on average young adults and they had above average aerobic fitness levels so they were well trained endurance athletes so now let’s try and answer our questions the first being does caffeine
Improve endurance performance the left figure displays the mean percentage difference in time trial performance between the placebo and caffeine trials for each study they reviewed and the right figure displays the mean percentage difference in time trial mean power output for each study therefore if the bar is pointing right caffeine improved performance and
If the bar is pointing left caffeine decreased performance we can see from the figures that nearly all studies observed that caffeine improved endurance performance compared to a placebo trial however we must not dismiss the fact that a small minority of studies observed a small decline in performance in addition we must not forget that these data are averages
And therefore must still be mindful that even though a study shows an average positive effect for caffeine on endurance performance some individuals within that study might have still experienced negative performance effects nonetheless the overall results indicate that caffeine improved endurance performance by an average of two to three percent compared to a
Placebo trial the next question we need to ask is how much caffeine is needed to see these performance effects the scientists actually performed meta regression on the findings and found that there was no relationship between caffeine dose and performance improvement they state that a dose of caffeine in the range of three to six milligrams per kilogram of body
Weight is sufficient as an example on how to calculate this simply measure your body weight let’s assume it’s 70 kilograms multiply that value by 3 to get the lower dose and by 6 to get the higher dose therefore for a 70 kilogram person the recommended caffeine intake is 210 to 420 milligrams of caffeine be sure that you’re working within kilogram units and
Double check any calculations you make because there have been examples where people have miscalculated their caffeine dose and in powdered form gave themselves the equivalent dose of 300 cups of coffee and ended up in hospital the last question we wish to ask is how long before exercise should i take caffeine it is clear that most studies use a protocol where the
Participants consume caffeine 60 minutes prior to the start of the exercise time trial however the international society of sports nutrition also recognized that consuming caffeine 15 to 30 minutes before the start of exercise can still improve performance lastly it’s important to be aware of other factors that could mediate the effect of caffeine on endurance
Performance smoking age oral contraceptives gender genetics can all influence the effect of caffeine which is why it’s always difficult to recommend a one-size-fits-all approach if you take caffeine on a regular basis might you build up a tolerance and be less sensitive to the effects of caffeine this one study observed that in regular caffeine users that they
Were able to significantly improve their time trial performance during cycling but there was no relationship between the amount of caffeine they took on a day-to-day basis and the change in performance they found their conclusion was that the performance effects of acute caffeine ingestion was not influenced by the level of habitual caffeine consumption so we’ve
Talked a lot about caffeine and endurance performance so let’s summarize what we’ve found let us know about your experiences with caffeine in the comments below have a great day and keep active you
Transcribed from video
Using Caffeine For Endurance Performance | Scientific Recommendations By To Know Sport
