A little confused about caffeine and training performance.

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

So I’ve heard it said quite a bit that taking caffeine before a workout inherently makes the session more stressful as you’ll have a higher state of arousal and likely use heavier loads than you would use otherwise. Since that added stress comes at a cost and one does not have infinite recovery resources is one likely to make better long term progress by not using caffeine?

I know the answer is probably nuanced but I just always hear conflicting opinions about caffeine.

Also don’t know if it matters in regards to this question but I weigh 175lbs and I generally take 300mg of caffeine 1-2 hours before training. I train typically from 4:30pm to 6:30pm and go to bed at 10pm.

2

Ishmael,

Thanks for the post and interesting question.

So, caffeine ingestion may or may not be associated with a higher internal workload, that is, the experienced workload by the individual. I don’t think there’s a reliable relationship here that persists across a population.

Additionally, the more you train - the better you get at recovering from and tolerating training.

In my view, the big thing to keep an eye on with respect to caffeine use is if it’s affecting your sleep at all. If not, I would recommend using it on high priority training sessions and taking a holiday for using it as an ergogenic aid otherwise.

-Jordan