Coffee… the new Sports Drink?

To all athletes out there, there is a beverage that may help your performance.

The caffeine in a morning cup of coffee could help improve athletic endurance, according to a new University of Georgia review study. Authored by Simon Higgins, a third-year doctoral student in kinesiology in the College of Education, the study was published in this month’s issue of the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. To research the issue, Higgins reviewed more than 600 scholarly articles and screened them for those that focused only on caffeinated-coffee conditions, measured the caffeine dose and measured an endurance performance. Of these, nine randomized control trials specifically used coffee to improve endurance.

Looking at the nine trials, Higgins found that between 3 and 7 milligrams per kilogram of body weight of caffeine from coffee increased endurance performance by an average of 24 percent. The amount of caffeine in a cup of coffee can vary from 75 milligrams to more than 150, depending on the variety and how it’s roasted and brewed.

Higgins said that coffee shouldn’t be dismissed as less beneficial for endurance. He found that coffee appears to be just as helpful as taking caffeine in the form of powder or tablets, but he also says that more research is needed before giving official recommendations to athletes, especially since the amount of caffeine in a cup of coffee can vary depending on how it’s prepared.