Caffeine Let’s take a dive into a stimulating new research on the matter of Pre-workout supplements. In this article, we’re going to dive into a new study that looked into the most stimulating Pre-workout ingredient of all, and whether if it actually makes a difference in your heavy lifting. With the goal of performing at your best. The ergogenic, performance-enhancing properties of a pre-workout are generally thought to be substantially, but not totally, due to one extremely common element, regardless of how many difficult-to-pronounce compounds it may include. Given that the pre-workout market generated a pitiful fifteen billion dollars in revenue last year, this is quite a move on their part. Caffeine, the most extensively used stimulant in the world, is a popular constituent in performance-enhancing products. Prior research also showed that this energetic entity could indeed affect our physical performance. However, in this new study, the findings might just challenge how meaningful caffeine truly is when it comes to heavy lifting.
Table of Contents
- Is it possible that caffeine doesn’t play much of a role at all, or maybe zero-caffeine Pre-workouts can be just as effective?
- Subjective Changes
- Conclusion
- Resources
Is it possible that caffeine doesn’t play much of a role at all, or maybe zero-caffeine Pre-workouts can be just as effective?
New Study
The study involved 24 college-aged, resistance-trained participants, with an even split of men and women. Using a randomized crossover design, each participant completed three different training sessions. For each session, they consumed a multi-ingredient pre-workout beverage containing 350 milligrams of caffeine, an identical multi-ingredient pre-workout beverage that contained no caffeine, and a placebo punch-flavored beverage. The beverages were all placed into opaque containers that were double-blinded to the researchers and the subjects, meaning neither the subjects nor the researchers knew which beverage the subjects were consuming on any given day.
Multiple exercise tests were performed, aiming for outcomes in upper and lower body strength and endurance, as well as isometric strength and rate of force development in the squat.
Results
The study found that for the most part, caffeine or not, pre-workouts did not have much of any effect when it comes to lifting. In both upper body strength and endurance tests via the bench press, the caffeinated pre-workout not only did not fare better than the non-caffeine pre-workout, it also had no significant benefit over the placebo beverage. The same results were observed in the lower body strength and endurance via the leg press, where again no improvements were observed with taking either the caffeinated or non-caffeinated pre-workouts.
Surprisingly, for the leg press 1 rep max, the non-caffeine pre-workout beverage actually fared worse than the placebo. For the squat measures, both pre-workouts did seem to increase performance in the isometric strength test and initial rate of force development. However, in the case of initial rate of force development, the non-caffeinated pre-workout in this case did better than the caffeinated beverage.
Caffeine Tolerance
A potential explanation for the lack of performance benefits from caffeine in this study is caffeine tolerance. The study chose participants that were habitual caffeine users, but tolerance is still a big question mark. It’s not uncommon for people to say that it’s harder to feel the effects of caffeine after taking a lot of it for a long time.
Subjective Changes
The researchers also measured subjective feelings and found that subjects did feel more energetic, less fatigued, and more focused when consuming the caffeinated pre-workout. Although it did not influence performance, these subjective changes should be considered. Keep in mind that these tests were done in a lab setting with controlled times, prep, and warmups. In a normal setting, people will be in a more comfortable, familiar environment, working out at a time they feel best, and have their own personal warmup routines. Pair these with those feelings of more energy, more focus, and less fatigue, it can very well make a difference to your training.
Conclusion
And finally, don’t ever forget that this is only one study. As good as the info might be, our decisions should never be made based on single findings, but rather through personal experience and findings with abundant evidence. Altogether, I think the findings here do make sense based on the environment the researchers created, but accounting for real-world differences and also existing conflicting research, I wouldn’t recommend throwing out your expired pre-workouts just yet. In the end, the choice is yours and how you feel about it, just remember that if you really wanna grow your calves, eat enough protein and… look for another goal cause it’s still ain’t happening. If you enjoyed this article, please make sure to give it a stimulating-thumbs up and share it with your caffeine-loving friends. Don’t forget to get your protein.
