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• Significantly increased work production in a cycling time trial.
  
  
• A significant reduction in 1500M swim times.



• A slight improvement in 10K running.
  

However, these studies were conducted under laboratory conditions and may not be representative of an athlete's typical "real world" experience which includes changes in pacing and tactics over the course of a race.

With respect to anaerobic performances (e.g., sprinting speed), the effects of caffeine are unclear.

The effects of caffeine on sports-specific agility had not yet been studied until Lorino, et. al (2006) published their article in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. Using the proagility run test (also known as the 20-yard shuttle run) and the 30-second Wingate test (athletes are asked to pedal a mechanically braked bicycle ergometer for 30 seconds, at an "all out" pace). They hypothesized that caffeine intake would enhance agility. However, their results did not support this. What is interesting is one of the conclusions the authors draw in their discussion of the study:

Well-trained athletes are likely to perform more reliably in any chosen performance task, especially if their training is specific to the test or employs aspects of fitness specifically being tested. Therefore, it is possible that caffeine may enhance agility in well-trained anaerobic athletes, but the results of the current study indicate that caffeine does not affect agility in recreationally active young male athletes.

Bridge and Jones (2006) opted to take their study of the effect of caffeine on distance running out of the lab and onto the street. No treadmills here. Instead, they gathered a group of 8 male distance runners [Women readers, please accept my apology. Unfortunately, there is an overabundance of research done on male athletes.] who competed regularly for over 2 years. They were asked to race against each other in an 8K. An hour before the time trial they were given a dose of caffeine.

The major finding of the study was that the ingestion of a relatively small dose of caffeine 1 hour before the race resulted in a noticeable improvement in performance. Worth noting is that the caffeine did not effect all athletes equally (improvement ranged from 10 to 61 seconds). The authors believe that these differences in responsiveness may indicate that there may be responders and non-responders to caffeine as an ergogenic aid.

While these results did not reach statistical significance, the researchers did note a trend for the participants to report that they experienced lower effort and fatigue in the time trials where they were given caffeine.

Now that caffeine is no longer on the official listed of banned performance enhancing drugs, should you use it? Obviously you should check with your doctor to make sure there are no health reasons for avoiding caffeine. After that, the research shows that while caffeine may not improve agility, it does help reduce times in endurance running race.

And if you aren't an endurance athlete, what then? Remember that at least some athletes that were given caffeine perceived that they needed less effort to accomplish their task.

Will it work for you? If you drink that shot of espresso or that energy gel with 3x the caffeine will your performance be enhanced? Hard to say. In part, because none of the studies on caffeine actually use coffee or energy gels. In these types of studies, athletes don't drink or slurp (how else to you describe what you do with a gel?) their caffeine. They are given it in pill form. So will you get the same effect they got? Only one way to find out.

Which brings me back to the placebo effect (something has a physiological effect on us because we believe it will). Does it really make a difference? Even if the research isn't conclusive, or doesn't use caffeine in the form we do, if we believe caffeine will make us faster, there is probably a good chance it will.

In my book, the most powerful performance enhancer is a positive mental attitude and strong belief in our ability to achieve our goals.

In keeping with this post, this month's Sportsminded Survey is up. Let's find out how many of this blog's readers use caffeine to help them during their athletic events. Please take a moment to respond to the survey. It's about half-way down the right hand column of the blog.

As usual, any comment you might have -- including humorous coffee and sport stories -- are always welcome.

References:

Lorino, A.J., Lloyd, L.K., Crixell, S. H., & Walker, J. L. (2006). The effects of caffeine on athletic agility. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 20, 851-854.

Bridge, C.A. & Jones, M.A. (2006). The effect of caffeine ingestion on 8 km run performance in a field setting. Journal of Sports Sciences, 24, 433-439.