Flying High

mycaffeineaddiction.com

Most of us love our daily coffee in the morning, I know I do.  Caffeine is a bit of a controversy within athletics though and is actually a banned substance above certain concentrations (12mg/L) in the NCAA as well as by the International Olympic Committee.   The concentration of 12 mg/L corresponds to about 8 cups of coffee, though typically one energy drink in enough to put someone above that concentration.

paleochronicles.com

I've always wondered what is its purpose of caffeine in athletics was, apart from keeping us awake and happy.  What I found in this article was that within athletics the main benefits of caffeine are believed to be both mental and physical.  On the performance side of it, caffeine is said to improve an athletes endurance, particularly in running and cycling.  However it was shown for sports needing quick bursts of energy such as sprinting, swimming, and gymnastics caffeine had very little impact.






On the mental side of things it has been shown that caffeine improves concentration for between 1 and 3 hours because it stimulates the central nervous system at high levels. The areas it normally effects are the medulla and the cortex and actually has the ability to reach the spinal cord in even larger amounts. Its the impact in the cortex that provides the effect of increased concentration. It was also shown that "for athletes competing in sports where quick thinking and rapid reactions are necessary, caffeine can provide a huge edge." This leads me to believe that in gymnastics and diving this is the area in which caffeine consumption would be an advantage.

There have been three main theories about how caffeine works. The first one, I think my favorite, is that caffeine actually causes the body to burn more fat and less carbohydrates. Muscles are primarily fueled by glycogen however fat is a much more abundant, though more difficult source the body can use for energy but caffeine can help the body utilize the fat.

Studies show that in the first fifteen minutes of exercise caffeine has the potential to reduce the loss of glycogen by fifty percent. When this happens, the saved glycogen can be used for the remainder of the workout where normally it would be entirely depleted. (http://www.rice.edu/~jenky/sports/caffeine.html)