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Ok, I’ll bet you think that was a joke, don’t you? Everyone knows caffeine is supposed to be bad for you. You hear it all the time, and from a lot of different people, including doctors, so why would you want to use caffeine in conjunction with your exercise program?  Before we completely dismiss the notion of caffeine as an exercise aid, consider the following.

Caffeine is one of the methyl derivatives of xanthine. Xanthines occur naturally in more than 60 plants and caffeine is the most potent of these and is found in coffee, tea, chocolate, many soft drinks and diet aids.

There is no doubt that caffeine works to help exercise performance. It is known to stimulate the central nervous system, mobilize various hormones that are involved in metabolic processes, improve muscle contraction, and improve the use of fats and carbohydrates for energy.

But, and this is a big but, how you use it is very important in whether you’ll get maximum performance benefits from it so take note of the results of numerous studies on the subject of caffeine use to enhance performance in order to fully understand how caffeine use can benefit your exercise program.
Here are the findings of those studies: [Read more…]