It is the MOST WIDELY ABUSED DRUG in the WESTERN HEMISPHERE...Enjoy it!!!!
It is the MOST WIDELY ABUSED DRUG in the WESTERN HEMISPHERE...Enjoy it!!!!
Also, it is not helping you set any records--the body builds a tolerance to the drug like any other drug.... Therefore, the benefit you get from one cup this month (if any?) will require 3 cups next month for the same benefit.. It is also the most widely studied drug in the Western Hemisphere..
Groundskeeper Willie wrote:
Plus, coffee helps me poop.
^^^
Which is actually a good point. A cup of coffee an hour or two before a race will help you empty your bowels, and thus run faster.
Does this make coffee immoral? Is Metamucil also immoral? How about a big bowl of All-Bran?
Groundskeeper Willie wrote:
Plus, coffee helps me poop.
^^^
Which is actually a good point. A cup of coffee an hour or two before a race will help you empty your bowels, and thus run faster.
Does this make coffee immoral? Is Metamucil also immoral? How about a big bowl of All-Bran? Prunes?
My damned coffee nerves made me post that last message too soon.
10/10. Not even the OP could have imagined the success of this ridiculous thread.
Rbyrne wrote:
Also, it is not helping you set any records--the body builds a tolerance to the drug like any other drug.... Therefore, the benefit you get from one cup this month (if any?) will require 3 cups next month for the same benefit.. It is also the most widely studied drug in the Western Hemisphere..
I'm a regular coffee drinker and I'm pretty sure caffeine tolerance does not build THAT fast.
I'm going to re-post a link to the statement that should have ended this thread 3 or 4 days ago, when the idiot OP brought this up: http://pics.livejournal.com/twoflower/pic/00023gph/g6
I Run Slow wrote:
OK, as someone who has extensively researched caffeine and sports performance as a graduate student, I feel the need to weigh in...
1 cup of coffee isn't going to do much of anything for performance. Seriously. It might make you feel better, though, and this is increasingly becoming one of the preferred explanation for caffeine's performance-enhancing abilities. Most home-brewed coffees will have 60-130 or so milligrams of caffeine. The two field tested running studies used anhydrous caffeine in doses of 3 milligrams/kilogram body weight (i.e. 130 pound runner=59.1 kgs x3= ~180 mg of caffeine) and 5 milligrams/kilogram body weight (~295 mg). Both of these studies found small, but significant, improvements of 1.0-1.2% (O'Rourke et al. 2008, 5-km track running, 11 second improvement for "well-trained" runners; Bridge & Jones 2006, 8-km track running, 24 second improvement) compared to a sugar placebo.
Personally, as an athlete and a coach, I see nothing morally or ethically wrong with using caffeine or similar substances (i.e. sodium bicarbonate) to improve performance. Caffeine is so widely used it's damn near impossible to regulate, which was one of the reasons WADA took it off the prohibited substance list in 2004. Another reason is that even high doses of caffeine (> 6 mg/kg BW) would still yield caffeine levels below the old IOC limit and could improve performance. In fact, one of the seminal papers on caffeine done by Graham and Spriet in 1991 found that only 1 subject out of 9 exceeded the old IOC limit of 12 micrograms/mL of urine.
It's not like caffeine is being abused, either. Recent data out of the doping lab in Barcelona found that caffeine use among athletes (based on urine samples collected and tested between 2004-2008) has not really increased since caffeine was removed from the prohibited list. I don't have the paper in front of me right now, but the facts appear to indicate that things haven't really changed (I believe the author is Del Coso 2011.
In addition to all this, as others have stated, there's shitloads of anecdotal evidence re. caffeine use out there...de-fizzed Cokes by top marathons in the '70s and '80s, black tea that the Kenyans drink a lot of, master's athletes popping No-Doz tablets before tossing the discus. Debsrow & Leveritt (2007) found something like 75% of athletes at the 2005 Ironman World Champs believed caffeine could improve performance, and 89% planned on using some source of caffeine during competition...
If anybody is interested in getting a copy of one of the papers I mention or is looking for more info, send me an e-mail.
What is the best time to take the caffeine? When did they take it for these studies you named?
I hope that there is just one troll out there, posting as all these people having a "moral dilemma" about drinking a cup of coffee.
Otherwise, half of America is retardedly prude.
I am not certain how long it takes to build a tolerance but I do recall from exercise physiology and sports nutrition class that tolerance with this drug happens rather rapidly...
laughingostrich wrote:
What is the best time to take the caffeine? When did they take it for these studies you named?
Most studies use a dose of 3-6mg/kg 60min before the start of the athletic event.
I'm on DHEA and igf-1... do i think that's immoral? hell no
10/10!
Rbyrne wrote:
I am not certain how long it takes to build a tolerance but I do recall from exercise physiology and sports nutrition class that tolerance with this drug happens rather rapidly...
Actually there have been a few studies that purportedly show that habitual caffeine users still get the same performance boost:
http://www.edb.utexas.edu/ssn/SN%20PDF/Caffeine-Exercise%20Perform.PDFpage 17. Hard to say for sure because most studies deprive subjects of caffeine for a day or two before the study.
You are correct though; many of caffeine's effects (higher HR, blood pressure, need to urinate) become tolerated quite rapidly.
Dude, this is a slippery slope. Let's take food. If you eat a healthy diet, that gives you an edge over the same teammate who eats pizza 5 days a week. Is that immoral? What about supplements and vitamins. Does that extra E capsule allow your cardiac function to improve that extra 0.00001% to let you beat your number 7 guy to make varsity? Was that right? This is where the Morman mentality comes in. How pure is pure enough? In our day and age anything and everything could be an advantage. There is no such thing as equality. If you are out there doping, cheating like hell and hoping to win. That's wrong. Drinking a cup of coffee before a workout is just called eating. Get over it. There really are bigger things in life than whether the cup of coffee you drank is giving you an unfair advantage. Seriously. Get your head out of your butt and just go run. It'll all be over when you graduate anyway. Save the moral dilemmas for more important things.
I'd say that if the OP considers it cheating or morally questionable, then he should just not do it. We obviously don't all share the same moral standards. My guess is that he won't actually notice much difference in performance, but why do something if it bothers you?
feckless wrote:
I'd say that if the OP considers it cheating or morally questionable, then he should just not do it. We obviously don't all share the same moral standards. My guess is that he won't actually notice much difference in performance, but why do something if it bothers you?
So, what, then, are the standards? How we feel about something? If I feel Blinker the Star is the greatest band ever, are they? This is relativism at its best (worst). This is also why there are standards for what is acceptable and what is not, i.e, the NCAA rule. The line of thinking that if I think it it must be is just stupid. There really are hard standards for what is an unfair level of this substance and what is not and a cup of coffee isn't it. Even 5 cups of coffee isn't it.
I'm a graduate student and know exactly the answer to all of these questions, as I have studied these issues for years. In particular we did a study that had a control group, a group that used EPO, and a group that drank coffee. The EPO group performed more poorly, while the coffee group improved significantly over either of the other two groups. Based on this, I would say that it's Okay to drink coffee prior to athletic competitions.
I thought coffee could have a negative effect over distance races being a diuretic and all.