Snacks #012: Your caffeine cheat sheet for exercise performance

I mentioned last week in my snacks series that caffeine can be used to boost your exercise performance, and we’re going to expand on that today.

Let’s chat about HOW you can actually utilise this amazing compound effectively.

If you’re confused about whether you should be taking a pre-run coffee shot or a pre-workout before the gym, then I’m here to give you the step-by-step to caffeine use for performance. I’ll cover:

- How much caffeine should you have?
- In what form? (coffee, pre workout, no doze…)
- How soon before the workout should you take caffeine?
- What kind of exercise is caffeine beneficial for?

After you read this, it’ll be time for you to use caffeine properly and reap the rewards.

First of all, how exactly does caffeine help?

• Caffeine appears to improve physical performance in both trained and untrained individuals
• Caffeine has been shown to be ergogenic for cognitive function, including attention and vigilance, in most individuals
• Caffeine may improve cognitive and physical performance in some individuals under conditions of sleep deprivation.
• Caffeine improves endurance capacity in time-to-fatigue exercises and resistance training.
   
• Ergogenic benefits in competitive time-trial activities.
• Systematic review shows an average performance benefit of ∼3.2% with caffeine supplementation before and/or during endurance-based TT activities (this is MASSIVE for athletes!)
• Performance benefits with an average improvement of ∼6.5% in short-term, supramaximal, and repeated sprint tasks (essentially, things with short sharp explosive bouts like intervals and team sports)

The optimal dosage of caffeine is 3-6mg/kg BM consumed 60 min pre-exercise. This can be a little mindboggling so I’ve done the work for you and provided your cheat sheet below:

If you are…

• 55kg, your dosage is 165-330mg
• 60kg, your dosage is 180-360mg
• 65kg, your dosage is 195-390mg
• 70kg, your dosage is 210-420mg
• 75kg, your dosage is 225-450mg
• 80kg, your dosage is 240-480mg
• 85kg, your dosage is 255-510mg
• 90kg, your dosage is 270-540mg

Keep in mind, you want to utilise the minimum effective dose that improves your exercise performance (no point overcooking the chook, as excess caffeine is detrimental to performance), so I recommend starting at the low end and increasing from there.

How should you take caffeine? Is coffee enough?

You can get your caffeine from coffee, tea, caffeine pills (eg no doze), energy drinks, pre-workout, caffeinated chewing gum, mouth rinses, energy gels and chews.

My preference for everyday exercise is to keep it simple and go for a double shot coffee (approx. 200mg) but if you need to be more precise for competition for example, then I recommend to choose a measured dose where the amount you have is controlled - this way you can replicate it in your competition after you’ve tested the amount in training.

Now you should understand exactly how to use caffeine and how much to take when it comes to boosting your exercise performance and don't forget to save this handy cheatsheet to smash your sessions!

Happy exercising 🙂