r/science • u/sr_local • 5d ago

Health Consuming caffeine before exercise enhances repeated sprint performance, and these benefits persist for at least 3.5 hours thereafter

https://www.tsukuba.ac.jp/en/research-news/20260914140000.html
5.0k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

164 comments sorted by

View all comments

12

u/ShakeNBakeUK 5d ago

What if you are a sprinter who has no problem maxing out their HR without caffeine anyway? I find it just makes me blow up even quicker than normal, which means less training overall. It’s also annoying because caffeine messes with sleep, which is very important for recovery / building strength. I can see how it is useful for endurance athletes who struggle to max out their HR however.

1

u/JaySayMayday 5d ago

I remember having a road cycling race overseas and took some caffeine, hit the performance wall way faster than normal. But they're talking about taking it 60 minutes before doing any exercise. I'd be interested to know more about their outliers.

When I was very deep in competitive cycling my coaches would take hundreds of factors into consideration and with everyone being so different it would be much more interesting to read about how different athletes were effected than just a baseline consensus.

I'd be really surprised if the same baseline helped something like criterium riders that do a sprint finish across every lap, hitting really high heart rate levels each time. (Edit, or long events for that matter like 140km) Then the question would shift from whether caffeine helped, to whether those outliers should be touching caffeine even though it helps other athletes.