Coffee can enhance athletic performance for some sports by increasing adrenaline, heart rate, and blood flow. Caffeine is considered an ergogenic aid that can boost endurance and speed when consumed in moderate amounts, such as 3-6 mg per kg of body weight or about 1-2 cups, an hour before exercise. While coffee may improve performance in sports requiring focus or endurance, there is no evidence it enhances power sports like weightlifting. Coffee is allowed in organized sports and its antioxidants provide general health benefits, though weightlifters likely won't see increased muscle mass from drinking it.

1. Does Coffee Enhance
Athletic Performance?

2. If you are a morning
jogger, weekend
soccer player or
weight lifter does
coffee enhance
athletic
performance?

3. Does it cause
problems? Is there
any prohibition to
the use of coffee as
a stimulant in
organized sports?

4. The last question is the easiest to
answer. Coffee is considered a food or
beverage and its use is not restricted in
organized sports.

5. But, will coffee give you the jitters just
when you want to calm down? And will
coffee give you that extra boost as you
approach the end of your run?

6. Is it better for an athlete to drink healthy
organic coffee to avoid the impurities
often found in regular coffee?

7. Here are a few facts and few thoughts
on the question, does coffee enhance
athletic performance?

8. What Does Coffee Do
for the Athlete?

9. We know that coffee wakes you up if
you are sleepy.

10. This is probably more important in in
interactive sports like tennis, soccer,
basketball, etc. where it is important to
pay attention no matter how tired you
are.

11. But, how does coffee enhance athletic
performance in sports like long
distance running or weight lifting? Here
is the Cliff Notes version.

12. Via a series of chemical regulatory
pathways in the human body the
caffeine in coffee affects the regulation
of glycogen, sugars and lipid
metabolism and stimulates the release
of adrenaline.

13. Coffee can be effective to enhance
performance when ingested as close as
fifteen minutes before exercise or
competition although an hour before is
ideal to insure complete absorption and
initiation of the regulatory pathways the
help coffee enhance athletic performance.

14. Coffee is effective in enhancing athletic
performance in moderate amounts,
three to six milligrams per kilogram of
body weight and larger amounts do not
appear to help.

15. An eight ounce cup of brewed coffee
contains from 100 to 200 milligrams of
caffeine.

16. A 154 pound runner weighs 70
kilograms.

17. Since three milligrams per kilogram
times seventy kilograms comes to just
over 210 milligrams it turns out that one
stiff cup of coffee taken within an hour
of performance will likely enhance
athletic performance.

18. Two cups may be better but three will
be a waste of time.

19. Thus drinking coffee increases
adrenaline. Adrenaline increase heart
rate and blood flow, increases blood
flow specifically to the brain and helps
improve short term speed and
endurance.

20. Scientifically, the caffeine in coffee is an
ergogenic aid for sustaining a high
degree of effort over the short term.

21. And coffee only lasts just so long and
then the body metabolizes and
excretes it.

22. Typically half of the caffeine that you
ingest at 7 am is gone by 1 pm (a six
hour half-life). If our hypothetical 154
pound runner drinks two cups of coffee
and gets 400 milligrams into his system
he will still have 200 milligrams six
hours later.

23. This is plenty of time for a slow
marathon runner to complete the
course or for someone to complete a
soccer match.

24. Besides the other good health effects of
drinking coffee, you may play a better
tennis match or score more goals in
soccer as coffee enhances athletic
performance.

25. Weightlifting

26. There is no compelling scientific
evidence that drinking coffee enhances
athletic performance in power sports
like weightlifting.

27. There is likely no increase in muscle
mass with drinking coffee.

28. To the extent that a weight lifter or any
athlete wants to stay generally healthy
and avoid bad things in their diet,
regular and organic coffee antioxidants
are a good choice.

29. These substances are known to have a
whole host of good effects such
reducing the risk of diabetes and
various forms of cancer.

30. You may be healthier from drinking
organic coffee but you will probably not
be able to lift heavier weights.

31. A hot cup of Irish
coffee waiting at the
end of a long run.