This week we will be diving into caffeine which is, in our opinion, one of the most underrated and simultaneously over-exploited supplements for enhancing sport performance.
According to the International Society of Sports Nutrition, when caffeine is consumed 60 minutes before exercise at a dosage of 3-6mg/kg of body mass it tends to show the biggest improvement in primarily aerobic training but also: muscular endurance and strength, movement velocity and sprinting among other things.
And as good as this all sounds, there are some key things we need to remember.
- Caffeine has a mean half life of around 5 hours but ranges from 1.5 to 9.5 hours. Half life refers to how long in takes for the substance to be reduced to half the original amount- this means if you’ve had 180mg of caffeine (A Nocco Can), 5 hours later you’ll still have 90mg in your system. This may be why you’re struggling to sleep when you sink a can at 4pm.
- Leading us nicely onto sleep disturbance. Caffeine has been shown to increase sleep latency (time to get to sleep), increase the amounts of times you wake up throughout the night and decrease sleep satisfaction. One study found that drinking caffeine 6 hours before sleeping reduced total sleep time by 1 hour.
For the nerds 🤓
💡 Adenosine is a neurotransmitter found in the brain that helps regulate the sleep-wake cycle. Usually adenosine receptors would bind to the adenosine molecule and create symptoms of fatigue. When caffeine is involved, adenosine is blocked from attaching to its receptor and instead caffeine binds to them; this causes an increase in neurotransmitter release, motor unit firing rates and pain suppression consequently blocking the feeling of fatigue. This is possible due to the similarities between the chemical structure of caffeine and adenosine.
What does this all mean?
- Try drinking all your daily caffeine before 1pm, ideally 30-60 minutes before your workout, limiting your daily allowance to 400mg .
- If possible, take occasional breaks from caffeine, perhaps your de-load week you could do without? This is to allow your body to not build up a tolerance to caffeine meaning you will reap more rewards when you do use it.