Coffee, Caffeine and Energy Drinks

By Grant Roberts

Coffee is one of the world's most popular beverages containing a very well known ingredient namely, caffeine. Caffeine is also commonly found in teas, soft drinks, chocolate, kola nut, yerba mate, guarana, cacao and some medications including many diet pills. Caffeine is also known as coffiene, thiene, matinee, guaranine, and methyltheobromine.

Plenty of bad news exists about coffee for instance its ability to deplete nutrients, the active ingredient caffeine has also been shown to cause nervousness, insomnia, heartburn, ulcers, infertility, miscarriage, anxiety, arrhythmia, cholesterol, heart disease, stroke… the list goes on. While it's true coffee can upset a stomach and keep you awake, the majority of the other adverse effects are likely a result of excessive consumption. Excessive consumption of caffeine is prevalent in today’s society. It is estimated that 90% of all North Americans ingest caffeine daily in one form or another, many habitually.

Now for the good news, as a professional trainer my job is to exploit foods for their positive effects. I do recommend the use of caffeine within specific parameters as it relates to timing and the amount consumed. Caffeine clearly is an ergogenic aid to athletic performance; so much so that it is a banned substance by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in elevated amounts. The irony is that high consumption of caffeine in my experience is not beneficial at all. I view all foods as a drug and prescribe the use of all supplements and foods to my clients with appropriate dosages generally considering the individuals body weight and lean muscle mass. Coffee however is somewhat unique in that the response in consumption I recommend in both male and female regardless of weight and density shows little disparity.

Drinking 1 cup of hot black coffee 15 to 45 minutes prior to training has shown very positive results. Do not add sugar to your coffee if your goal is to burn body fat, the ingestion of carbohydrates block your body’s ability to access stored body fat as a fuel. Regarding quantity, I further suggest using the typical small, medium or large servings to determine your consumption comparative to your own relative size and drink the equivalent. For all you Olympic hopefuls this moderate dose of one cup of coffee contains between 100 to 150 milligrams per cup of caffeine on average falling many times short of the IOC’s restricted amount of 12ug/ml of urinary concentration or the equivalent of approximately 1200 milligrams within a three to four hour period. Caffeine in my opinion like many other substances supports the theory that if a little is good, more is not necessarily better. Over consumption of caffeine or ingestion other than immediately before training in my experience is ineffective and potentially detrimental.

Black coffee acts as a thermogenic, increasing the body’s temperature, this is beneficial as increased body temperature burns more calories. Caffeine increases your metabolic rate causing your systolic blood pressure and heart rate to increase. Additionally, caffeine has been shown to spare glycogen, by releasing fatty acids in to the blood stream. Muscle cells absorb the free fatty acids and use them for energy production, which not only delays fatigue, but positively affects fat mobilization and the use of stored body fat as a fuel during exercise.

Caffeine further stimulates the central nervous system, specifically the brain and skeletal muscles. This provides enhanced neuromuscular transmission and improved muscle contractibility, partly because of the natural release of epinephrine (adrenaline) and the additional release of calcium into the muscle cells. What is termed your perceived rate of exertion (PRE) is lowered meaning you will feel stronger through the workout which, can lead to the recruitment of more muscle fibres and an ultimately a more effective workout session.

While caffeine does not improve your actual volume of oxygen capacity (V02max), it does enable you do become much more efficient in the utilization of oxygen uptake on the cellular level. This is beneficial two-fold in the delaying the onset of fatigue but more importantly if your goal is creating a defined physique, fat requires oxygen when being used as a fuel source.

This limited consumption of coffee prior to training as outlined in my experience has provided excellent results. It is however important to remember that caffeine does elicit a diuretic effect, this coupled with the dehydration involved in the raising of body temperature especially when combined with the natural loss of fluid associated with rigorous exercise warrants that you should stay well hydrated during and following your workout session by drinking plenty of water.

For those of you who really can’t stand the taste of coffee then caffeine is also available in pill form and a dosage of 100 –200 mg per workout should suffice or alternatively you can try tea or green tea however the caffeine content is much lower so you may have to drink a little more. Black tea is approximately half as potent as coffee and green tea contains only about one quarter the amount of caffeine.

If you are wondering about the use of sports /energy drinks that contain caffeine, these products do not play the same role as the carbohydrate /electrolyte drinks which do not contain stimulants. The non-caffienated sports drinks are designed for hydration during an endurance type event and typically contain only carbohydrates and salts to act as a fuel and replace what is lost in sweat. The energy drinks containing caffeine generally have higher sugar content than sports drinks. Higher sugar concentrations from an endurance point of view actually slow absorption of water making these drinks less suitable for endurance purposes. In either case if your goal is to access stored body fat as a fuel during your workout then any drink containing sugar will be detrimental to your goal of utilizing and burning stored body fat.