Exercise physiologists have studied caffeine’s effects in nearly every way: Does it help sprinters? Marathon runners? Cyclists? Rowers? Swimmers? Athletes whose sports involve stopping and starting? The answers are yes and yes and yes and yes.
Starting as long ago as 1978, researchers have been publishing caffeine studies. And in study after study, they conclude that caffeine improves performance. In fact, some experts like Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky of McMaster University in Canada, find it hard to believe that anyone could even ask if caffeine has a performance enhancing effect.
“There is so much data on this that it’s unbelievable,” he said. “It’s just unequivocal that caffeine improves performance. It’s been shown in well-respected labs in multiple places around the world.”
For many years, researchers thought the sole reason people could exercise harder and longer after using caffeine was that it helped muscles use fat as a fuel, sparing the glycogen stored in muscles and therefore increasing muscle endurance. But there were several hints that something else was going on. For example, caffeine improved performance even in short intense bursts of exercise when endurance is not an issue.
Now, Dr. Tarnopolsky and others report that caffeine increases the power output of muscles by releasing calcium that is stored in muscle. The effect can enable athletes to keep going longer or to go faster in the same length of time. Caffeine also affects the brain’s sensation of exhaustion, which permits an athlete to exercise maximally before getting tired, Dr. Tarnopolsky said.
The performance improvement in controlled laboratory settings can be as high as 25 percent and combining mixed sources of natural caffeine in one serving have been found to be better than a single source. The best sources of natural caffeine-like alkaloids come from Guarana, Yerba Mate, Cola Nut, and Green Tea.
