Caffeine, Training and Recovery

There’s no denying that we all have suffered from caffeine dependence at some point and time. Whether not you drink coffee, you’ve most likely consumed caffeine at some point and time in your life. Caffeine is a crystallized compound found in tea and coffee plants that stimulates your central nervous system. 

Caffeine speeds up the messaging between your brain and body. Most consume it to feel an increase in mental and physical energy. For example, upon waking, before a big lifting session, during an intense study session or to tackle a heavy workload.

Of course, having access to this kind of energy boost doesn’t come without its own set of consequences… Heart palpitations, high blood pressure, faster breathing rate, irritability, brain fog post-usage, increased urination, restlessness, shakiness, Insomnia, dizziness, dehydration, and anxiety. It’s a wonder we use it at all!

As dreadful as these side effects may seem at first glance, it’s very manageable to find the proper dosage for your to handle and how to implement its usage in your day-to-day routine. 

Caffeine Upon Waking

The aromatic smell of your morning brew is definitely something worth getting out of bed for. Starting your day with a cup of Joe or a hot cup of tea is a routine most will adopt once transitioning into adulthood. What’s often overlooked is how something as simple as the timing of this drink could either boost your mental clarity or slump you into a perpetual state of brain fog and fatigue for the rest of your day. Upon waking, our cortisol levels naturally rise for our basic metabolic functions to get going and to bring us the alertness we need to perform daily tasks. 

Our morning cortisol peaks between 7:00 am and 8:00 am. If you happen to consume too much caffeine before this time, you may be messing with your circadian rhythm and you could experience heightened levels of the side effects mentioned above. Mind you, just because you don’t feel anything, it doesn’t mean there isn’t some impact on your system beneath the surface. No matter the freest you feel, consuming large amounts of caffeine prior to these hours in the morning could impact your body’s natural cortisol secretion. 

While some metabolize caffeine better than others, generally speaking, anything between 95-135mg of caffeine is a safe range to play around with. The upper limit for most adults to consume a day is 400mg but, then again, this entirely depends on whether or not you can metabolize caffeine well and when you’re consuming this dose. If you carry the CYP1A2 gene, you most likely will be able to tolerate more caffeine than others. This isn’t to say that you’re invincible to caffeinated products and can drink endless amounts of them. Drinking anything between an 8 to 12-ounce cup of coffee to start the day is a great place to start if you’re looking to regular your caffeine consumption. 

Consuming caffeine in any form will enhance the secretion of cortisol and norepinephrine at rest. This will increase your levels of arousal so you become more aware, awake, focused, and generally more responsive.

Caffeine As A Pre-Workout

Utilizing caffeine before training is a sure way to gain a proper boost to your mental clarity and gain a little more physical energy. Of course, taking too much may cause adverse side effects such as heart palpitations, anxiety, and restlessness but overall, caffeine has been shown to increase one’s physical performance in the gym or in a particular athletic endeavour. Just as taking it in the morning to kickstart your day, the dose makes the cure—or the poison. 

When it comes to training, the timing of this intake is also a factor to consider when dosing caffeine. Some train as early as 6:00 am while others will begin their lifting session at 8:00 pm. Generally speaking, most caffeine has about a 5-hour half-life. A good rule of thumb to use is to consider when you’ll be going to bed and limit your consumption about 5 hours prior. This comes with its own set of considerations as everything metabolizes caffeine at different rates and everyone presents different sensitivities to this substance’s powerful energetic properties. 

If you’re a morning gym-goer, having either a cup of coffee or half a scoop of pre-workout before heading out could very well support the training you’re about to do. If you’re training later in the day, perhaps after your work day, consuming a quarter or half scoop of pre-workout could benefit you. Even a midday espresso could give you that boost you’re looking for to carry you into a big lifting session. No matter what you lean on to get your caffeine kick, the most important thing to keep in mind is the dosage. People too often glance over labels or group products together under the same umbrella. 

Did you know a single shot of espresso holds 63 mg of caffeine while a 12-ounce cup of drip coffee holds on average 120mg of caffeine? If you’re looking to limit your intake or consume a smaller dose, grabbing “any cup of coffee” may result in having you experience the opposite effects you’re looking for. How your coffee or tea is brewed and what type of coffee bean or tea leaf is used to prepare your beverage can also impact the level of caffeine in your cup.

The same goes for pre-workouts. 

These products are trickier as sometimes the combination of the entire list of stimulants could be too much for your system to handle but the dose of caffeine itself is alright to manage. Not all pre-workouts or energy drinks are made the same. Reading thoroughly how much caffeine each “serving” contains is a must before starting any new pre-workout tub to understand how each ingredient dosage could impact you. This is especially for regular coffee or tea drinkers. The amount tallies up to your total daily intake and the more you consume, the longer it will take for your body to completely expel it from your system. 

Caffeine, Sleep, And Recovery

We’ve all perhaps experienced consuming caffeine to try and “stay awake” or “power through a big project”. Unfortunately, your sleep most likely suffered from it as well resulting in a hard-to-break cycle of drinking copious amounts to try and get by. What’s ironic about it is that when we consume caffeine, it affects our brain by blocking out receptors that are trying to signal us that we’re tired and we need rest. By blocking out these receptors, we aren’t able to realize our bodies are trying to communicate with us so we continue to pour gasoline onto the fire. You don’t need “more energy”. You need SLEEP. Sleep is mother nature’s own powerful drug and deserves its own blog to do it justice (stay tuned). 

While sleep is essential to proper brain function and recovery, dosing your caffeine appropriately to allow your body to recover post-training is also a crucial factor to consider. After a big training session, your body is in fully in a catabolic state, cortisol is at its peak and you’re flying high on endorphins. This is ideally where you’d consume your post-training fuel to support muscle growth and replenish glycogen stores. Slowly, you should shift back into an anabolic state where androgen hormones (such as testosterone, IG-F1, and GH) will start to be released in order to repair any exercise-induced tissue damage. 

You can see here how the consumption of coffee or any form of caffeinated drink could blunt your body’s natural recovery process when you should be prioritizing reducing catabolic hormones (ie. cortisol) and clearing byproducts. Caffeine ups your cortisol, and you want to reduce cortisol post-workout.

Your cortisol will most likely drop back down 1 to 2 hours post-training so if you’re craving a midday caffeine hit, waiting until then could be the right call. 

Where to go from here?

If you’re looking to dial back on your caffeine intake, ask yourself where you feel you might be overdoing it. Giving yourself a bit of a tolerance break without removing it cold turkey could be a great approach to getting your body to reap its benefits once more. Taking into account the natural rise of cortisol in the morning, sticking to consuming most of your caffeine in the earlier hours of your day could be a good place to start. Then, give yourself a cut-off time and stick to beverages lower in caffeine content to help keep you under the 400mg upper limit.

Author’s Note: It took me years to understand my true tolerance and threshold. My sleep/wake schedule changed drastically as I changed jobs, my training scheudle changed, my training output changed, and my work demands changed. Something that took me a while to realize was how much the habit of caffeine consumption became a sort of bandaid or self-soothing behaviour in moments of heightened stress or moments that demanded a high-performance output. Being able to meet myself in the middle and gain the self-awareness of knowing what’s too much for me was when I was able to unlock its true power. Now, I dose my caffeine appropriately to support my hormones, support my training, support my workload, and support my day-to-day energy!