Got coffee? Here’s why and how Caffeine can aid performance.
In the third of our four-part legal supplement series, Jeff and Jinger discuss the proven science behind Caffeine. You’ll learn what it does to you, how much you might want to take, how long the potential benefits last, and what to watch out for. And did you know it might help you burn fat more efficiently? All that and more in this episode of The Knowledge.
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https://www.wahoofitness.com/blog/best-nutrition-for-race-day-performance/
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Jeff Hoobler 0:00
Hey, welcome back to another episode of The Knowledge podcast by Wahoo. I'm Jeff Hoobler.
Jinger Gottschall 0:04
And I'm Dr. Ginger Gottschall. This is part three of the series you do not want to miss on illegal performance-enhancing supplements. And I bet you all have been waiting for the supplement we're going to chat about today, because you might be interested in it and or use it, or maybe abuse it. Caffeine!
Jeff Hoobler 0:25
I've been waiting all morning.
Jinger Gottschall 0:27
That's right.
Jeff Hoobler 0:28
So please remember that, as we get talking about this, those genetics, physical conditioning, sports, specific training, periodized programs, mental health, recovery strategies, and nutrition are all primary factors for endurance, athlete development, and performance. Dietary Supplements are a secondary factor with the potential to make a minor contribution to your success.
Jinger Gottschall 0:51
Right. So what we're saying here is that all of these supplements we're talking about could help you we're talking 3% In terms of performance ish, where what you really want to put your energy into is your training,
Jeff Hoobler 1:05
right, you definitely have to train you got to bake the cake, you got to put the icing on.
Jinger Gottschall 1:09
Exactly. And then maybe you can follow that up with a sip of coffee, or tea, or tea. Delicious. In addition, if you are not, at this time utilizing any of these supplements, it's actually best to just have a chat with a medical professional before you start anything. Even regular caffeine use even though it's something that you can buy almost anywhere, just to get a sense of where you are, and how this could influence you so that you are ready for any of the side effects that may come along with it.
Jeff Hoobler 1:40
Yeah, and on a lighter note, did you know some of you may recall the first time you ever had coffee or you know a caffeine drink and perhaps it affected you in a not such a great way? I know that I did. And I thought oh wow, my buddies drinking this thing. It looks really good. What do you get there? Oh, some coffee with cream had one. I was like, Whoa, that's really good. I'm going to have another and I had another Ooh. Yeah, not so good. At the time, we were playing rugby up in Canada, and I was playing fullback. And I remember sitting in the locker room before the game shaking. The worst game ever. Anyway. So yeah, just be aware that even though these things are somewhat common, they can have a very adverse effect, as well.
Jinger Gottschall 2:35
Yes. And we will chat about how your genetics can play a role in terms of your sensitivity and how you feel. One last warning is that if you are an individual that has hypertension, or high blood pressure, you may have additional high sensitivity to caffeine, which could be a contraindication. So watch out for that if that's one of your current conditions. Right now we're going to kind of shoot back and forth between us with just telling you some of these facts about caffeine. Right.
Jeff Hoobler 3:06
So let's start off with caffeine being a naturally occurring substance. It's found in the leaves, seeds, and or fruit of more than 60 plants.
Jinger Gottschall 3:16
And it is actually the most popular psychoactive substance in the world in the world. And data suggests that the majority of athletes actually use it in some way to enhance their physical and or mental performance. So this can really help you get a little bit amped up and feel more cognitively acute also, right?
Jeff Hoobler 3:40
So caffeine is a stimulant that is rapidly absorbed into your bloodstream with well-established benefits for athletic performance, as we mentioned, such as improved endurance capacity.
Jinger Gottschall 3:52
So that's something you may be looking for with respect to feeling better longer into your training and or events. How does it work? Well, it blocks adenosine receptors, which in turn produce a stimulating effect. And this will also increase your endorphin release, which makes you feel pretty good after exercise and or race,
Jeff Hoobler 4:22
right. It also improves your neuromuscular function by activating the central nervous system which also reduces the perception of exertion or physical fatigue, right?
Jinger Gottschall 4:35
All of these things with respect to making you feel better while you're exercising making you last longer during that exercise positive feelings during and after all are related to the release of norepinephrine, dopamine, acetylcholine, serotonin, that's my favorite one in terms of giving a little boost of positive feelings can caffeine is having an influence on all of these. So it is it has a very broad effect.
Jeff Hoobler 5:06
So let's talk a little bit about the dose,
Jinger Gottschall 5:09
an optimal dose is anywhere from three to six milligrams per kilogram of body mass. So you get your body mass, and you basically are just going to take that times three to six, to find out what it is, a low dose would be less than three, and a higher caffeine dose is going to be greater than nine. Or you can take this in the form of a pill, or a powder, or in many of the liquids that we are familiar with. So Jeff, can you give us a little bit of the range of the most popular, drinkable caffeine? And let us know what is this content in terms of milligrams,
Jeff Hoobler 5:52
right, so as a reference, your normal cup of coffee is anywhere between 95 milligrams, and 150 milligrams of caffeine per cup, you know, that's an eight-ounce cup of light roast coffee tends to be on the higher end of that spectrum. Whereas dark roast is on the lower espresso comes in around 65 milligrams per shot of black tea, as anywhere between 14 and 70 milligrams of caffeine green tea between 24 and 45. And white tea between six and 60. So there's, there's quite a variance there,
Jinger Gottschall 6:28
I'm going to give a couple of things just to highlight what Jeff said that I am always surprised by I would have thought that dark roast is higher than light, when that's not the case, the dark roast, basically some of that caffeine gets burned away. So the light roast is the higher caffeine content. The opposite is true of teas, the darker is the higher, so black tea than green than white with respect to. So there's a little catch there with respect to coffee versus tea. And espresso is less than your brewed coffee, right? And now let me go back to this dosage that we talked about. So for me, a dose could be around 450 milligrams I could handle, which would be three cups of
Jeff Hoobler 7:18
coffee, right, which seems like that'd be just a bit on the high side. It does, yeah.
Jinger Gottschall 7:23
And therefore do some tests for yourself to see how much you can handle what is a typical amount that you can handle in terms of the actual liquid as well as the caffeine? And the timing of this also, it's usually in terms of endurance activity, you can get a little hit within the around 30 minutes,
Jeff Hoobler 7:46
right. And, it lasts while the caffeine is actually in your system for up to 10 hours. But the ergogenic effect is usually less than six, right?
Jinger Gottschall 8:01
This actually ties into some of the other podcasts when we've talked about sleep, which is why that six-hour block is something that you want to think about in terms of your recovery. If you're going to bed at 10 pm and then your last coffee, you'd want to be no later than 4 pm Give yourself that little buffer.
Jeff Hoobler 8:20
And if you're sensitive, probably no later than noon.
Jinger Gottschall 8:23
Exactly. And again, so this is kind of knowing what it does to you. In addition, before you start kind of have an idea where you fall in the spectrum of your intake. So if you don't really have any caffeine or less than 25 milligrams a day, then you're what's called a naive consumer. And you want to
Jeff Hoobler 8:45
wait a minute, wait a minute, naive, that means I don't know what I'm doing.
Jinger Gottschall 8:48
It means your system might not know how to handle
Jeff Hoobler 8:52
Right, right. Okay, there we go.
Jinger Gottschall 8:55
Then a low consumer is anywhere up to about one milligram per kilogram per day. And then we can take it up to a moderate consumer, which is three to six milligrams per kilogram per day to a very high consumer, which is greater than nine. And then it's getting to be a lot of there.
Jeff Hoobler 9:13
That's a lot. Especially in terms of cups of coffee. I thought I was a high consumer, but I'm in that moderate range.
Jinger Gottschall 9:23
I may be in the mild one to three for sure. That Do you feel just that caffeine influences your performance?
Jeff Hoobler 9:34
You know, I don't really notice it. And that's because I generally just have my normal one or two cups of coffee every day, whether I'm doing an early ride or doing a race. So it's a day-to-day thing and I don't look to it for a boost, okay, and to be If I'm being honest, I don't know that when I'm out working out or writing or doing a workout if I haven't had coffee, that it really affects me, it might just, I feel a little groggy. But as far as performance, it's not really an impact for me. All right.
Jinger Gottschall 10:15
And this is also something to keep in mind, there are genetic tests out that you can send in some of your salivae. And they will come back and tell you how sensitive you are to caffeine. And that will help you understand what it can and can't do for you in terms of performance, as well as recovery and sleep. So if you're really interested, or maybe you don't have caffeine, and you're interested in trying it, this would be something to do,
Jeff Hoobler 10:42
talking about this performance impact. And what we know is that caffeine can enhance your endurance capacity, for instance, time to fatigue during a time trial, or of varying durations, from five to 150 minutes, and across numerous exercise modalities, including cycling.
Jinger Gottschall 11:03
In addition, studies have shown that low doses consumed during endurance exercise, so this is actually taking it during your event, either 15 to 80 minutes from the start, can actually improve your performance or decrease the time it takes you anywhere from three to 7%. Another very specific study found that 200 to 300 milligrams of caffeine at the 10k point of a 30k cycling Time Trial, improved mean power input by 3.8%. So that's the power you are outputting. Improves, if you take it a third of the way through the event. That's a significant amount that is and also it improved the power output at the end, of the final sprint by 4%. One of the things that I'm most fascinated by, in this whole caffeine talk is how much genetics influences your sensitivity to caffeine, and therefore how much it can influence your endurance performance. So there are genetic variations in terms of HTR two a, as well as CYP one, a two. And if you know that you have those genotypes, then you may know that you have a sensitivity to caffeine. And therefore, you will understand how much it can and cannot help you because of the positive effect that it can have, especially on some individuals. The NCAA, the National Collegiate Athletic Association is actually starting to regulate how much caffeine is okay, terms for college athletes. So, we do need to be aware of the guidelines and the regulations to know what is legal and not legal. Especially if you're working with athletes. Now, there's also an understanding of what caffeine in a pill versus powder versus liquid can do. And the different effects in terms of when it does anything for you when it kicks in to understand how to use it correctly.
Jeff Hoobler 13:25
Yeah, you know, I was experimenting with caffeine pills several years ago, and let me just tell you, that went south really fast, whether it was the timing and absorption, that that changed things, but a pool, it did not have a good effect. So going so if you are using caffeine from say, for instance, coffee, and then you are going to take a caffeine tablet, you might have a completely different effect or timeframe for it to kick in.
Jinger Gottschall 14:03
Exactly. Yep. So again, it's all about experimenting during training, not racing, in terms of finding out your optimal strategy. The last thing in terms of these additional tidbits that I wanted to share is one of the mechanisms which is really interesting is that caffeine may actually enhance your ability to use body fat as a fuel source. So, therefore, when you're doing super long rides, let's say you're doing a century ride, then caffeine periodically through the ride may actually help you utilize fat and not just use those more simple stores. So that's also a way that you can feel stronger longer.
Jeff Hoobler 14:53
One of the other things that are interesting is caffeine has shown to improve glycogen absorption during post Exercise fueling. So, a little bit of coffee or, you know, a shot of espresso in a recovery drink will help that fuel get into your system a little quicker,
Jinger Gottschall 15:14
right, which is really helpful in terms of recovery.
Jeff Hoobler 15:17
But you do want to be careful. So if you're doing, you know, a late afternoon workout, and you're using caffeine to speed, that refueling, right, you might actually be delaying your sleep if it's late in the day, so just, you know, play that in the equation. Yes, it's early in the morning is probably,
Jinger Gottschall 15:37
I love that you brought that up because it does become a game and a puzzle in terms of putting together when you're having it when the workouts are, what you're eating, and how to recover properly. Another thing, high intensity, we've talked a lot about endurance. But caffeine can also give you a boost in those shorter bouts. And it also helps with voluntary activation in your reaction time and assists in the contractile properties of these faster twitch muscle fibers. So lots potential here. But knowing who you are, and your limits is critical.
Jeff Hoobler 16:19
Right, right. Yeah, just take it easy. Don't overdo it. As with anything and you know, one more time, this is only the sprinkles on top of the icing on top of the cake. You still gotta bake the cake,
Jinger Gottschall 16:34
bake the cake, and do your training. If you want to have a little bit of experimentation with this stimulant called caffeine and its many forms, then chat with a medical professional first, and then
Jeff Hoobler 16:48
have and ready for a cup of coffee?
Jinger Gottschall 16:51
I totally am. Let's, let's head to the cafe. Well, that is it for another episode of the knowledge podcast. We hope you're able to take away some useful information on this series of legal ergogenic aids that will help make you a better endurance athlete and maybe a better sprinter too. Thanks for listening to the knowledge podcast biwako