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."