Many of us would love to be able to get more out of our workout routines in terms of fat burning, lean muscle maintenance and/or building, and even just the oomph to push ourselves just a little bit harder without feeling like we’re going to drop. However, most of us would also say that performance enhancing substances are out of the question. We’ve all heard about the nasty results that certain substances can have when athletes take them, and that’s not just a matter of having Olympic medals taken away or being suspended from a professional league.
However, it isn’t uncommon for people to be surprised to find out that one of the best performance enhancing drugs that can help them to power through workouts and blast through more calories and fats can actually be found in the average kitchen. It’s very common, it’s perfectly legal, and it is very safe to use every single day. What is it? Caffeine is the performance enhancing drug.
That’s right, the substance that you drink in your coffee or even your tea, every morning, is also the one that can become your best friend when you want to be able to get through an early morning workout without feeling as though you can’t do it, or that you must then drag your way through the rest of your day because you have sapped all of your energy early-on.
One cup of coffee can help you to feel driven so that you will put more into your workouts and, therefore, burn more fats and calories, but it can also revitalize you once you’re done your workout too. The ideal time to drink a coffee is about an hour after you get up in the morning, and make sure that you give it about another hour to “kick in”. If this doesn’t work with the timing of your workout schedule, then just make sure that you have your coffee about an hour before you decide that you’re going to power walk, run, or hit the gym.
This will not only increase your motivation to actually get up and move around, but it will also ensure that you put more into the workout. This isn’t just an opinion shared by many athletes and bodybuilders. It has actually been shown in scientific study to be true.
Recently, the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness published a study that was conducted by researchers in Brazil, who asked a small group of men (14 in total) to complete their workouts with and without caffeine on specific days. The days in which the men received the caffeine (5 milligrams per kilo of body weight, which is around 2 to 3 cups of coffee for a 150 pound person). After about an hour had passed the men experienced greater level of readiness for the workout. They were asked to perform leg presses and bench presses until failure, which means that they were asked to do as many sets of three as they cold until they were no longer able to complete them. The caffeinated days showed notably better completion numbers (11.6 percent better for bench presses and 19.1 percent better for leg presses) than those when caffeine was not supplemented.
