What events can benefit from taking Caffeine?
It is not entirely clear what events will benefit most from taking
caffeine, but laboratory studies have shown improvements in performance in
events lasting from a few minutes to 2 hours or more. This covers the full
range of events from 1500 m to the marathon. Although caffeine has
traditionally been used mostly by endurance athletes, including marathon
runners and cyclists participating in multi-stage events such as the Tour
de France, it seems that there may be benefits for athletes competing in
shorter track events.
Some experiments show improvements in strength, and it might be expected
that this would translate into improvements in sprinting speed, but the
experiments to prove this seem not to have been done.
Caffeine could be used in training with the aim of increasing fat use and
possibly increasing the effectiveness of training sessions. There is little
or no evidence to support this at present and the scope for caffeine use
seems to relate to acute use in competition.
Caffeine ingestion 1-3 hours before exercise can improve performance in
events lasting from a few minutes to several hours.
Caffeine can also increase force generating capacity (strength) in isolated
muscles stimulates to contract
It seems likely that different mechanisms of action are involved