Coaches, What Would You Do If You Caught an Athlete Taking Caffeine Pills?

seattle prattle wrote:

I smell a troll

Agreed.

Looks like you are right that WADA doesn't even have a limit on the amount of caffeine you can use any more, so load up on those caffeine pills! Seems like the limit for caffeine was removed in 2004. NCAA still seems to have some arbitrary 500 mg limit that contradicts WADA.

The WADA stimulants page says you that you can use ephedrine when you keep it below 10 mcg/mL in your urine and you can also use pseudoephedrine when you keep it below 150 mcg/mL in urine. Ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are two of the key active ingredients in the ephedra plant that leads to dramatic weight loss. Ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are isomers of one another, but seems like ephedrine is the more powerful of the two and why it is restricted to a lower concentration.

I've also just learned what an ECA stack is (ephedrine + caffeine + aspirin) and has been well used and researched by athletes that gives dramatic weight loss over placebos. I have no doubt that virtually all competitive runners are on some sort of ECA stack (including all the athletes you coach) given the big benefits from it and the loophole WADA leaves open you can drive a truck thru.

Nothing. My D1 college team takes caffeine pills 1hr before race. We have shared with them all the literature and we have 100% compliance across men’s and women’s teas . You’d be stupid not too. Only 1 200mg pull. They also drink beet juice after every workout long run or race. We are not P5 but CUSA.

On a slightly different note, I wonder what a good amount of caffeine is for a distance event.

200 mg seems like a bit much, to me. Wouldn't a racing heart work against you at some level?

From personal experience, I would be comfortable with something slightly less - between 100mg and maybe 150 mg.

What i tend to do is have a general caffeinated baseline to start, and then have that 100 - 150 mg jolt a few minutes before a run.

seattle prattle wrote:

On a slightly different note, I wonder what a good amount of caffeine is for a distance event.

200 mg seems like a bit much, to me. Wouldn't a racing heart work against you at some level?

From personal experience, I would be comfortable with something slightly less - between 100mg and maybe 150 mg.

What i tend to do is have a general caffeinated baseline to start, and then have that 100 - 150 mg jolt a few minutes before a run.

The amount is going to depend on how your body reacts to caffeine. For me, taking 200 mg of caffeine x 2 in one day = 400 mg the first time, I could feel my heart rate increase a bit. But in the second day of taking the same 400 mg, my body had already adjusted and I had no increase in heart rate, I didn't even have any sleep problems. I think I'm usual though with my high tolerance to many drugs, not just caffeine. I'm really curious what my tolerance to cobra venom is.

I think i would tolerate cobra venom fairly well, having established very solid baselines in internet vitriol.

OozmaKappa wrote:

Coaches what would you do if you caught your athletes chewing rungum?

OP is Nick Symmonds

I can't believe this hasn't already been proposed but I would sit them down and make them watch the "Jesse's Song" episode of Saved by the Bell. If that doesn't scare them straight, then there's nothing that will.

Caffeine was added to WADA's monitoring program back in 2017 so at some point there may be a limit again.

Only someone ignorant in science and the sport would not take caffeine. That kid should be listened to, not admonished. Here is the world governing body on promoting caffeine as a performance enhancer. -

https://www.worldathletics.org/news/press-release/iaaf-consensus-statement-nutrition-for-athlet

Will it drop my 5000m time from 14:30 to 14:00 in the span of a week by starting to take caffeine pills?

Jesse's Song wrote:

I can't believe this hasn't already been proposed but I would sit them down and make them watch the "Jesse's Song" episode of Saved by the Bell. If that doesn't scare them straight, then there's nothing that will.

/thread

WAH-DA wrote:

I'm curious as to what a coach would do if they caught an athlete taking caffeine pills. Caffeine is no longer a banned substance according to WADA up to about 1000 mg/day since there is caffeine in many common food items like coffee, tea, or chocolate. But is taking caffeine pills not against the spirit of anti-doping? Is it not like using needles to inject saline and vitamins?

Would you kick an athlete off your team for taking caffeine pills? Or are you the mind your own business type?

So, the question is what would I as a coach, do if I caught one of my athletes taking a caffeine pill?

Nothing

i might hire them to mow my lawn, do yard work, or maybe paint the house.

A kid that doesn't doddle is nothing to scoff at and I would definitely look into it,.

Low Mileage Runner wrote:

I graduated college recently, and late freshman into sophomore year a lot of my teammates discovered caffeine in pill form and started using it. the coach of the women's team got really irrationally upset about it and somehow compared it to nicotine (???). It all came to a head when she sat both men's and women's teams down in the film room to have our trainer give a PowerPoint presentation on the effects of caffeine.

To her dismay, the trainer simply presented the facts about caffeine and its performance advantages (for most people) and the meeting turned into an awkward situation where the coach and trainer were not presenting a united front. If anything, the meeting that she imagined would be a sort of drug intervention to get people to stop taking caffeine actually resulted in more people on the team taking caffeine before races.

LOL this is a great story - IT'S D.A.R.E. ALL OVER AGAIN

why would this be an issue given your athlete is not taking enough to get to the point of diminishing returns

Ask them to share. Some of these meets have been long.

I would warn them that taking high levels of caffeine after getting the spike protein(s) from the COVID vaccine(s) is extremely dangerous and can lead to heart attack or stroke even in high conditioned athletes.

But other than that health warning they are not violating any rules or policies, so there is nothing else to be done.

Wow, some really bizarre comments on this thread that I can only hope are trolling.

I take caffeine pills before races and hard workouts. 200 mg makes me a bit too jittery, so I usually bite off half the pill or slightly more. I don't drink coffee, and this has worked well for me.

If I were a coach, I'd commend the athlete for looking for ways to improve performance that are perfectly within the rules, and offer simple guidance to make sure that they aren't overdoing it.