Why you should be drinking coffee before working out
Starting your day with a cup of coffee has become the standard practice for millions around the globe, but starting a workout after consuming a cup of Joe is somewhat less common, but maybe you should be thinking about upping the caffeine intake before hitting the gym.
A Spanish study published in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism found that trained athletes who took caffeine right before a workout actually burned around 15% more calories in the preceding post-exercise hours than those who had no caffeine at all.
The surprising portion? Just how little you need to actually benefit from this effect…
All it takes is a dosage of 4.5mg of caffeine per kilogram of bodyweight, so for a woman who weighs 68kg that would be roughly 300mg of caffeine or the same as a medium coffee (340ml).
The best part is that this will be very close to the amount you have in your normal morning cup of coffee!
Stateside, over half of Americans start their day with a cup of coffee, whilst we don’t quite match our colonial cousins in the consumption stakes, our booming coffee culture sees us drink approximately 55 million cups of coffee per day.
This guy looks like he definitely needs a cup of coffee!
So, if we simply shift our timings of the coffee drinking to just before we go to the gym, then we might see some serious benefits – well, according to this information.
With 80% of the British coffee shop frequenters going at least once per week, the early gym-going crowd could be a great way to increase profit margin and decrease that waistline.
Of course, it should be said that when we mean ‘coffee’ in this instance, it’s usually an Americano or espresso variant rather than a coffee of the milky variety.
Stick to the basics of espresso and water and a dash of milk if you must, to help aid your workout should you want to get a boost in your bench press.