COFFEE & EXERCISE

We often drink coffee to give us our morning jolt of caffeine and energy for the day. So how effective is drinking coffee right before a big workout? Does it make you work harder? Can it help or hinder certain exercises? Lisa Ng, of C the Coffee Blog, asked April Saunders and Michelle Saraiva, registered dieticians with GetRealGurls Nutrition a few questions regarding the link between the two:

How does drinking coffee before exercise affect the body?

Caffeine found in coffee can stimulate your nervous system, which enhances alertness, awareness, wakefulness, endurance, productivity, and motivation. Caffeine can also cause increased blood pressure and heart rate. Studies show that it may also help decrease your feelings of tiredness or exertion while working out for long periods of time.

Can coffee improve my workout?

A few studies have shown that it may help to increase physical endurance (i.e. long distance running) and can help you feel more alert/less tired during your workout. More research needs to be done, however, for us to confidently recommend coffee as something to help improve workouts (currently research shows it can improve performance by about 4-6%).

Is it possible to have too much coffee before exercising?

Research has shown that 2-10 mg/kg body weight of caffeine a day is what worked. To put this into perspective, someone who weighs 130 lbs (59 kg) would need about 120 mg of caffeine, or one cup of coffee on the lower end, to experience some sort of workout-boosting effect.

However, too much caffeine can lead for certain people to certain side effects like anxiety, jitteriness, rapid heartbeat, gastrointestinal distress and insomnia. If you are going to use coffee to enhance your performance, make sure you use it all throughout training and not just the day of the big race!

What about staying hydrated?

We all know that hydrating properly, especially when working out, is a must. You may have heard that coffee is a diuretic (something that causes the body to lose water). However, new evidence shows that coffee, when used in moderation, does not cause dehydration or electrolyte imbalances.

Is there an optimal time to drink coffee before a workout?

The optimal window seems to be about one hour before you exercise. This will give the caffeine time to enter your system prior to your workout.

So there you have it! Drinking a cup of coffee at least one hour before working out is ideal, and it is best to do so in moderation to avoid any caffeine-related side effects. Coffee is most likely to increase your long-term physical endurance.

The Kona Cowboy Coffee Company can get your exercise regimen going with our three brands of gourmet coffees.  You’ll get a real kick start with PANIOLA 100% Kona Cowboy Coffee, grown on Hawaiian volcanoes and roasted in the Rocky Mountains, the one with no bitter aftertaste and no acidity.  CAFÉ PINON de Nuevo Mexico is the Southwest’s favorite with pinion nuts and a perfect way to relax after exercise.  And our MOKA-JAVA is a medium dark roasted blend of Indonesian and Ethiopian coffees that will knock your athletic socks off!  We also make COWBOY ACTION COFFEE, the Official Coffee of the Single Action Shooting Society! 

The purpose of this blog is to unite Kona coffee lovers and perhaps learn a little about coffee and all the benefits of coffee at the same time.  Join up, become a member, comment and have fun!  You can find the Kona Coffee Fiends group on Facebook and we’d appreciate it if Facebook users would “LIKE” the Kona Cowboy Coffee Company page at www.facebook.com/pages/Kona-Cowboy-Coffee-Company/222070817858553.  Just copy and paste to your browser.  You can also find us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/jackshuster.  And on the web at www.KonaCowboyCoffee.com to order your gourmet coffee and coffee products.

Look for the Kona Cowboy Coffee Company’s Cowboy Coffee Saloon in New Mexico at the Ruidoso Evening Lions Gun Show, November 3-4 and at the Ruidoso Christmas Jubilee, November 9-11 at the Ruidoso Convention Center.

You know you’re a coffee fiend when the nurse needs a scientific calculator to take your pulse!  So enjoy your coffee, make it Kona, and remember, Kona is the home of the Hawaiian cowboy…and we had cowboys in Kona before there were cowboys in Texas!