Should you supplement your workout with caffeine?

Should you supplement your workout with caffeine?

Many people like to workout with all the help they can get.  This help usually comes in the form of common supplements like a whey protein, and some sort of muscle builder.  With whey proteins, there isn't much variation as far as ingredients goes, but with muscle builders there is one very important difference: those which contain caffeine, and those that do not.

To begin I would like to talk a bit about caffeine, what it is, and what it does.  First off, caffeine is considered a drug on account that it has pharmacological effects on the human body.  For this reason caffeine is not classified as a nutrient.  Ironically caffeine is found in many “nutritional supplements”, as well as in many ordinary soft drinks.  For example the caffeine content found in a regular cup of coffee has about 50 to 100 mg in each cup.  Popular teas contain anywhere from 35-60 mg per cup.  Ordinary soft drinks contain a little more than 50 mg per can, and the extremely popular energy drinks often have more than 100mg per can.  

Many people often use caffeine to cover the telltale signs of fatigue, as well as increase endurance.  The actual amount of performance enhancement depends greatly upon a few factors.  A few of these factors includes your body mass, as well as your body's metabolism.  

Basically there are three main areas where caffeine effects an athletes performance.  The first of these is that caffeine increases fat burning during exercise while sparing glycogen.  This is accomplished by stimulating the production of adrenaline.  What this does is increases the rate in which fatty acids are released from fat cells into the blood stream.  This process might possibly promote fat loss by helping muscles to use more fat and less glycogen, in turn postponing or even fighting off fatigue.

Caffeine also acts as a stimulant which means that it contributes to muscle contraction.  This contraction is a result of stimulating the release of calcium from the muscle cells, which enables calcium to stimulate the contraction of the different muscle groups.  This is said to increase overall strength as well as power output.  

Caffeine also is a heavy central nervous system stimulant.  Because of this some athletes have reported significant gains at the psychological level, thus helping you to focus, as well as cut the fatigue.

So it's pretty easy to see that caffeine really does help with certain aspects to playing sports, particularly those who are looking to shed pounds or lift weights.  But the real question is at what cost do athletes get these gains?  How much is risked or harmed to get some otherwise attainable goals?  Excessive amount of caffeine can cause irritability, diarrhea, trembling, restlessness, nervousness, and even some thing more serious like heart palpitations.  For this reason we highly suggest that you don't take any supplements that have caffeine in them.  Caffeine is also a diuretic which means that your body will excrete more fluids than normal, thus requiring you to increase your amount of water intake.

The most important thing to consider is that if you are trying to build muscle, then caffeine is the last thing you would want to take.  Caffeine constricts blood flow, and blood flow is what muscles need to grow at their best.  

If you are interested in caffeine free/stimulant free muscle builders please check out mytopform.com