Coffee enhances endurance

Coffee is used as a pick-me-up, or even a get-me-going, by millions of people around the world every day. We know that coffee provides the stimulant effects of caffeine as well as containing other pharmacologically active ingredients. It is caffeine however that maintains a significant hold on the popular awareness and it has been isolated and used in pills by athletes to enhance performance. In a new study however, researchers wanted to see if coffee, not just caffeine extracts, would be able to improve performance as well.

Consuming enough coffee to provide between three and seven milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of bodyweight will boost endurance performance by an average of 24 per cent.

For the study a researcher reviewed more than 600 academic articles on the effects of caffeine on endurance and physical performance. He found nine studies that had looked at the effect of coffee, not just caffeine, and were of sufficient quality to be reviewed. In the nine trials subjects either cycled or ran after drinking coffee and as they exercised vigorously the results achieved were measured.

Collating the findings from these nine studies the researcher found that the caffeine from coffee will have an “ergogenic” effect, that is, it will boost physical performance. Specifically, he found that consuming enough coffee to provide between three and seven milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of bodyweight will boost endurance performance by an average of 24 per cent.

Depending on origin of the coffee and the brewing method used a cup of coffee will contain anywhere from 75 to 150 milligrams of caffeine, although some espressos have been clocked at a scary 300 milligrams of caffeine. That means for your 70 to 80 kilogram person to get a 24 per cent endurance boost they will need to drink somewhere between two to four cups of “average” coffee.

That is quite a lot of coffee to be drinking when you could just train regularly and boost your performance that way.