Why Coffee Is Not A Great Source Of Caffeine For Performance?

Caffeine is a highly effective ergogenic aid that can have a significant effect on performance across a broad range of exercise tasks, from short sprints to multi-day rides on the bike. 

It's been incredibly well researched and well established as one of a small number of supplements that can improve performance under certain conditions.

Research has demonstrated that doses in the region of 3-6 mg per kilogram of body weight are highly effective in improving performance.

Many cyclists will utilise coffee as a method in which to ingest caffeine. Given that not only is it super tasty, hydrating (when more fluid rich coffees are consumed – i.e. longer americano’s), contains other compounds that are beneficial to health, but is also a key part of cycling culture for many.

Relying on coffee for your caffeine intake poses one significant issue, though. Let me explain.

As I mentioned earlier, we know the dose of caffeine that is ergogenic (i.e. performance enhancing). Too little caffeine and you might not achieve any ergogenic benefit. Too much caffeine and it can actually negatively impact on performance, leaving you a jittery anxious mess.

As such, when looking to maximise the performance effects of caffeine, the dose consumed is critically important. But how much caffeine is actually in coffee? This is where the problem lies.

The caffeine content of coffee is highly variable, owing to factors such as the conditions in which the beans were grown, how they were roasted and how the coffee was prepared into a delicious coffee beverage, all influencing the caffeine content of a coffee.

A number of studies have demonstrated this. Professor Ben Desbrow from Griffiths University in Australia has published several studies in this area, testing the caffeine content of several different types of coffees, with the results of these studies being really quite surprising.

Nespresso is a brand renowned for the ability to produce consistently good coffee with minimal input from the user, requiring no technical skills and very simple equipment. Whilst the quality of the coffee itself may be consistent, when Prof Desbrow and colleagues sampled an array of different Nespresso coffees using a gold standard technique for determining caffeine content, they showed a huge amount of variability in caffeine content, even between the same flavour pod.

As you can see in the results table from the study below. The Caffeine content for all pods ranged from 19 to 147 mg serve, and the actual values of the tested coffee represented 51–162% of the manufacturer’s reported values. For an athlete, this is the difference between n enough to see an effect to having too much. 

Prof Desbrow also completed a study of the caffeine content of 99 over-the-counter brewed espresso shots, from different retailers local to the university. As shown in the table below. There was also huge variability. Having one coffee with a caffeine content of 25mg one day and 153mg the following time, for exactly the same coffee, is again a huge difference! 

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What are the implications of this for athletes? In effect, whilst coffee can be a good source of caffeine, when looking to maximise the ergogenic effect of caffeine, utilising a supplement that is known to provide a measured dose of caffeine may be more effective than relying to coffee, which has huge variability within the caffeine content adn the importance of optimising the dose of caffeine for performance. 

Using coffee may be absolutely fine during training, where there are limited implications to not having the optimal dose, but during competition, where performance is absolutely critical, a supplement makes more sense. 

As with any supplement, though, it’s important to ensure it is from a source that has batched tested the product…https://www.fueltherideacademy.com/blog/why-every-cyclist-needs-to-know-about-the-dangers-of-supplement-use

Coach Ben 

References 

Desbrow, B., Hall, S., & Irwin, C. (2019). Caffeine content of Nespresso® pod coffee. Nutrition and health, 25(1), 3–7. https://doi.org/10.1177/0260106018810941

Desbrow, B., Hughes, R., Leveritt, M., & Scheelings, P. (2007). An examination of consumer exposure to caffeine from retail coffee outlets. Food and chemical toxicology : an international journal published for the British Industrial Biological Research Association, 45(9), 1588–1592. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2007.02.020