Caffeine: Great for Athletes
You may have heard that caffeine prior to exercise can help increase performance and stamina.
According to Health and Wellness Chanel, a new study was just released that shows that athletes that consumed caffeine and carbs after strenuous exercise had 66% more glycogen in their muscles 4 hours later than athletes who just ingested carbs alone.
Glycogen is important because it is the fuel your muscles use to function. Therefore, increasing glycogen levels after a hard workout will help you recover faster and perform better during the following day’s workout.
So athletes, it sounds like you should drink half of your favorite energy drink before your sport and the other half after, or why not go totally crazy and have a whole can before and another whole can after!
8 Comments
+1 Hobo! 
I hope my track coach reads this! He gets mad when he sees me chugging energy drinks before I run the mile. He claims it’s “bad for you”. 
The one thing keeping me from downing a lot of caffeine before an activity is it makes you thirsty!
A good solution to that is being able to have some water during the activity, or to have a break to drink some water.
one thing i hate is that when you drink a bunch of coffee or something, it makes you have to use the bathroom alot. and i cant use the bathroom during practice.
So I read the abstract to the article to see how much caffeine I should be drinking during my exercise. And, holy crap, here’s how much they used:
8 mg/kg body mass
So, if I understand this correctly, an athlete with my weight (170 lbs = 77.11 kg) should drink about 617mg of caffeine. That’s just under a four-pack of Monster.
So the conclusion of this blog should read “drink two of your favorite energy drink before and two after.” Except that these athletes had a team of medical types monitoring them as they did that, so you probably shouldn’t try it at home.
Or you could not waste money and just buy a bottle of No Doz.
[...] Caffeine: A study shows that athletes who consumed caffeine and carbs after strenuous exercise had 66 percent more glycogen in the muscles four hours later than athletes who ingested carbs alone. Try this Morning Mocha Smoothie for post early-morning workouts. [...]
When i drink energy drinks before/after, it helps keep me from feeling sore too, caffeine ftw!