When it comes to improving athletic performance every minor improvement is substantial as the elite are separated by a fraction of a percent.
- The men’s 100m dash at the 2016 Olympics results show the difference between 1st and 8th place was a grand total of only .25 seconds with 2nd and 3rd place only being separated by .02 and 4th and 5th being separated by .01.
- In the 2008 Olympics men’s 100m butterfly event Michael Phelps won gold by one-hundredth of a second.
Athletes at this level train and prepare all year to hope for even a 1% improvement in their performance as it is the difference between gold and silver.
Those still on their way up however could potentially see up to 3% improvement as they have not yet reached peak performance.
So, how does coffee come into play?
ENTER COFFEE
Over 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed around the world everyday but some athletes mistakenly tend to stay clear of it, why? Because they heard that it will negatively affect performance such as dehydration or their cardiovascular health in the future.
Multiple in-depth studies and meta-analyses (mathematically combining the results of numerous studies) below show that not only does coffee not have these negative effects but that it also has been proven to improve athletic performance for both strength and endurance athletes.
And the stronger the coffee, the better. (Best coffee for athletes at end)
Improvements in endurance athletes
“In an effort to assess the effects of caffeine ingestion on metabolism and performance during prolonged exercise, nine competitive cyclists (two females and seven males) exercised until exhaustion on a bicycle ergometer at 80% of Vo2 max. One trial was performed an hour after ingesting decaffeinated coffee (Trial D), while a second trial (C) required that each subject consume coffee containing 330 mg of caffeine 60 min before the exercise.
Following the ingestion of caffeine (Trial C), the subjects were able to perform an average of 90.2 minutes of cycling as compared to an average of 75.5 minutes in the decaffeinated Trial.“
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/723503
The group that drank strongly caffeinated coffee lasted 15 more minutes than the decaffeinated group. That is 17% longer!
Another study, this focus on time trials:
“A recent meta-analysis aggregated the results of 44 studies that evaluated the effect of caffeine on time trial performance. Caffeine was found to reduce time to completion by about 2% (2% faster = good).
Mean power output during time trials also was increased by about 3% with caffeine intake.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30094798
“Generally speaking, caffeine enhances endurance performance on a variety of aerobic exercise tasks with reported effect sizes (a statistical concept that measures the strength of the relationship between two variables on a numeric scale) range from 0.2-0.6, which would typically be classified as a small to moderate effect”. – Stronger By Science
Fact: Olympic marathon runner Shalane Flanagan, Olympic diver Abby Johnston, and record-breaking professional cyclist Evelyn Stevens all swear by coffee and have stated that it dramatically improves their performance.
Improvements in strength & power athletes
First a recent article from 2018 looking at 1RM strength tests and vertical jumping ability:
“A search through eight databases was performed to find studies on the effects of caffeine on: maximal muscle strength measured using 1 repetition maximum tests; and muscle power assessed by tests of vertical jump.
Ten studies on the strength outcome and ten studies on the power outcome met the inclusion criteria for the meta-analyses. Caffeine ingestion improved both strength and power.
The meta-analyses also showed significant ergogenic effects of caffeine ingestion on maximal muscle strength of upper body and muscle power.“
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29527137
Another one looking at anaerobic power output in the form of a Wingate test. The aim of this test is to measure the anaerobic (explosive) power of the lower body.
” If you’re not familiar with the Wingate test, it’s a brutal, 30-second cycling test that involves cycling as hard as possible against a fairly high resistance level. If you were to design a test solely for the purpose of making someone vomit from exertion, the Wingate would be that test. Caffeine was found to enhance both peak (ES = 0.27) and mean (ES = 0.18) power output during Wingate sprints, reinforcing the idea that caffeine enhances power-oriented outcomes.“
*ES – Effect sizes*
https://www.strongerbyscience.com/caffeine/#Strength_and_power
Fact: 2x NBA All-star and 3x NBA rebounding leader Andre Drummond has a cup of coffee before every game.
The truth about the risks of coffee
The most common misconception about coffee is the fear of cardiovascular issues somewhere in the future if you drink too much, but that fear has actually been disproved by multiple large and quite thorough studies.
“In studies that adequately control for smoking and other important factors, coffee consumption has not been associated with substantial increases in cardiovascular disease risk. In fact, studies generally tend to show that “moderate” coffee intake, often defined as somewhere between 1-5 cups per day, is actually associated with a reduction in risk. Beyond this intake, studies generally show that the health benefits disappear, but cardiovascular risk doesn’t seem to be meaningfully elevated when coffee intake is kept within fairly reasonable ranges (less than 6 cups per day).”
https://www.strongerbyscience.com/caffeine/#Common_concerns
The other popular misconception is that coffee drastically dehydrates you, something athletes should actually be concerned about. However, there is also evidence disproving this fear below:
“It is certainly true that caffeine has a mild diuretic effect, meaning it increases urine output (and, therefore, fluid loss). However, the most common methods of ingesting large caffeine doses also involve fluid ingestion, such as drinking a cup of coffee or an energy drink. So, while a cup of coffee may slightly increase urine output, it also provides several ounces of water, and therefore has a net positive effect for hydration status.
A 2016 study evaluated the hydrating effect of several beverages by monitoring fluid balance in the 4 hours following ingestion. The beverage hydration index of caffeinated coffee was lower than plain water, but not by much, and certainly not by a large enough magnitude to be concerned about. In addition, humans develop a tolerance to the diuretic effect of caffeine, to the extent that it becomes even more negligible in people who consume caffeine regularly.”
https://www.strongerbyscience.com/caffeine/#Common_concerns
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Why is coffee best? Why not preworkout or something else?
In all of the cited studies coffee was the source of caffeine ingested by the athletes meaning pre-workout powders may not reap the same benefits.
More reasons why you should drink coffee instead of pre-workout:
“In 2014, several pre-workout supplements were found to have DMBA. This is a substance pretty close to another chemical banned by the FDA, DMAA. Both DMBA and these supplements containing it were banned later in 2015 for increasing risk of heart attacks, bleeding of the brain and even death.
Pre-workout powders also utilize emulsifiers to help all the ingredients dissolve and mix together smoothly. Unfortunately, these emulsifiers have some pretty nasty side effects, including diarrhea, abdominal pain, nausea and some emulsifiers have been linked to negative effects on fertility and reproduction.”
https://spoonuniversity.com/lifestyle/why-taking-pre-workout-supplements-might-be-a-bad-idea
Which coffee is best for athletes?
Since caffeine content is the primary variable discussed in the results above decaffeinated coffee will be of no benefit to us. Lightly caffeinated coffee also will not be what we are looking for.
As stated earlier the stronger the coffee is the better it is for athletic performance.
“Research showing performance benefits tends to provide doses ranging from 3-6 mg/kg of bodyweight, and most studies tend to stay on the higher end of this range (5-6 mg/kg of bodyweight), just to be safe.
If you weigh 100kg (220lb), this means that you’d be given a 600mg caffeine dose in most studies”
https://www.strongerbyscience.com/caffeine/#Strength_and_power
COMPARE DEATH WISH TO OTHER AMAZON BEST SELLERS
In summary strongly caffeinated coffee has been proven to improve the performance of both endurance and strength/power athletes as well as not having any adverse health risks.
Unlike most pre-workout supplements coffee has been around for many years allowing the data to be collected and examined over spans of decades, indicating accuracy.
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