Do Cyclists Need To Stop Using Caffeine To Maximise Performance Benefits?

Caffeine is often a crucial part of the pre-ride ritual for many cyclists. As one of a few supplements that have consistently been shown to impact performance positively, as well as being bloody tasty when in coffee, it’s not a surprise why.

A dose of caffeine, around 3-6mg per kilogram body weight, can positively impact endurance and strength performance across a range of exercise durations through caffeine’s impact on the central nervous system. Caffeine helps block fatigue receptors, making exercise feel easier, fending off fatigue and improving exercise performance. This applies not only to competitions but also to training when in a fatigued state or during key sessions, helping ensure an athlete can maximise training quality and, therefore, long-term training gains.

For many athletes, caffeine intake has become so habituated that the initial stimulatory effect/lift that came from first drinking coffee/consuming caffeine has long since disappeared. As such, caffeine is required to feel normal instead of gaining that initial stimulatory effect.  

As such, it has often been suggested that athletes must endure the largely negative effects of caffeine withdrawal before a competition to reduce their tolerance and maximise the benefit from caffeine on performance during key competitions. This is rarely something any athlete would look forward to due to the potential for caffeine withdrawal to induce severe headaches, fatigue, lethargy, drowsiness, impaired concentration, depressed mood, anxiety, and irritability. All of these are unlikely to be positive to performance if experienced in the days leading up to the competition.

A recent meta-analysis of 59 previously published studies has recently reviewed this question. Whilst there are individual responses that can be lost in the overall analysis, the general conclusion from the overall picture of the available data was…

“habitual caffeine consumption does not influence the ergogenic effect of caffeine supplementation across a range of different exercise types, or for male, female, trained, and untrained individuals. The ingestion of a pre-exercise caffeine dose lower than the habitually consumed dose seems to be equally effective as the consumption of a pre-exercise dose greater than the habitual caffeine dose. Caffeine withdrawal does

not enhance the acute ergogenic effect following caffeine intake and appears unnecessary”.

This is potentially a huge win for many athletes, as not having to stop caffeine-consuming pre-race and still achieving the full performance benefits is great news. Having the ability to have your coffee and drink it, as the meta-analysis was titled, is a big appeal!

Of note was that they also observed that high doses of caffeine may not be effective for performance, so athletes only need modest doses in order to maximise the ergogenic (performance-improving) benefit of caffeine. 

“Lastly, pre-exercise caffeine doses < 3 mg/kg BM and between 3 and 6 mg/kg BM were effective in improving exercise performance, whereas a caffeine dose > 6 mg/kg was not.”   

As with a lot of sports nutrition research, if we take all the data together, we do potentially miss out on important individual responses. As such, if you can cope with the negative impacts of caffeine withdrawal, it may be worth experimenting with caffeine withdrawal ahead of key events, particularly if this is something that you believe may be beneficial, but this may not be nessasary. As often, placebo effects can be equally as effective as genuine effects of supplements like caffeine.

Coach Ben

Reference 

Carvalho, A., Marticorena, F. M., Grecco, B. H., Barreto, G., & Saunders, B. (2022). Can I Have My Coffee and Drink It? A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis to Determine Whether Habitual Caffeine Consumption Affects the Ergogenic Effect of Caffeine. Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 52(9), 2209–2220. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-022-01685-0