Caffeine For Muscle Building!

The benefits of caffeine in helping you build muscle mass just keeps piling up. Caffeine is definitely one of the cheapest substances around, yet has so many upsides to it that it’s incredible.

Well, now even more research has proven that not only can taking caffeine before a weight training workout session help blunt the pain associated with intense training, but also reduce the soreness that forms afterwards in the muscle. In addition, it can even make the muscle itself stronger.

Hey, combining being able to use more weight for more reps, for longer periods will definitely push muscle building in your favor!

Here are some of the studies:

*Researchers from the University of Nebraska (Lincoln) reported that weight-trained men who drank coffee (or a caffeine pill) 1 hour before working out raised the number of repetitions they could complete on the bench press.

*In another study, they also reported that taking caffeine before a workout session allowed them to use 5 more pounds than normal on the same exercise (the bench press).

*The University of Georgia (Athens), a 2007 University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), the University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa) at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) in New Orleans, and the University of Connecticut (Storrs) at the 2007 ACSM Meeting all found that caffeine about 1 hour before working out not only helped reduce
the pain from the intense weight lifting bouts, but also either increased strength and / or performance than when not taking the caffeine pill / coffee.

*The University of Georgia reported that caffeine helped lower delayed-onset muscle soreness after a leg workout that used negative training (and we all know how a lot of us walk around limping for days because of soreness in our legs after doing a ton of lunges).

The key in all of this is to drink either a caffeine pill, like Vivarin or No Doze, or better yet, drink a strong cup of coffee, that is the equivalent of 200-400 mgs of caffeine 30 - 60 minutes before that muscle building workout session.

Recover From Xtreme Exercise

New research has shown that adding a few cups of coffee to the carbohydrates eaten by athletes following exercise boosts muscle recovery by up to 60 per cent – apparently solving a problem that has foxed sports physiologists until now. The study, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology in July, has found a solution to a problem that has resulted in increasingly complex dietary schemes designed to help athletes recover faster.

"If you give an athlete more petrol in the tank, they will go further. What we've done is to give them 50-60 per cent more petrol," said Professor John Hawley, head of the exercise metabolism group at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Victoria, Australia. "It has been incredibly hard for exercise physiologists to help athletes in this way, and it's a dilemma that has occupied researchers for decades. We asked athletes to ingest caffeine, which has no nutritional benefit, and the results were astounding."

In the study, athletes cycled to exhaustion before eating a carbohydrate sports drink, bar or gel with a high caffeine dose – the equivalent of five or six cups of strong coffee – immediately after the exercise, and then two hours later. "We found that the amount of carbohydrate that could be stored by the muscles when ingested along with caffeine was about 60 per cent higher than with carbohydrates alone. If you've got 60 per cent more fuel there for your next day's run, cycle ride or football game, there is no question that you would be able to go further or faster.
"The practical outcome of that is that an athlete training or competing the next day will have a better training session or race," Dr Hawley predicted. "Caffeine has a wonderful effect on both short-term sprint performance and on endurance. It is a remarkable drug that affects both ends of the spectrum."