Here at pace.coffee we regularly talk about caffeine as an ergogenic aid, or to put it in plain English as a way of improving performance in sport.
In this short article, we would like to suggest five ways in which caffeine could have a positive effect on your performance:
- Caffeine wakes you up and makes you feel more alert. It does this by blocking the receptors in your brain which make you feel more sleepy. The caffeine ‘pick-me-up’ effect is genuine, not imagined!
- Caffeine makes you feel less pain or gives you the perception of working less hard – this can’t be a bad thing whether you are about to train or compete.
- Caffeine can affect your muscular strength, allowing your body to hold muscular contractions a little bit longer which in turn have the potential to reduce the risk of strain and soreness caused by hard physical exertion.
- Caffeine can help burn fat. For an endurance athlete this can be important as it might allow you to preserve your glycogen stores for longer and therefore perform more efficiently for longer.
- Caffeine increases your adrenaline, sending more blood to your brain and muscles, increasing your blood pressure, and raising your blood sugar levels in order to give you more energy.
Is it all as simple as that? Well, not exactly. Whenever we talk about the benefits of caffeine, it’s also important to add the caveat that we all react differently; and there is a point at which too much caffeine can have an adverse effect on performance.
We encourage you to use caffeine sensibly in a way that it can work for your advantage!
We also encourage you to take a look at some of our other articles including “Can coffee improve my PB?” and “What are the benefits of coffee for runners?” which give more background and information on this important topic.
