Coffee for Exercise Performance

Research suggests that caffeine, including when consumed as coffee, is one of the more consistently supported ergogenic aids in the sports nutrition literature, with evidence spanning meta-analyses, systematic reviews, randomized controlled trials, and narrative reviews collectively indicating benefits for aerobic endurance, resistance exercise performance, power output, and repeated sprint capacity. Studies indicate that these benefits appear across a range of exercise types and have been observed in both men and women, with whole coffee performing comparably to isolated caffeine supplements in several direct comparisons, and some trial evidence suggesting that compounds in coffee beyond caffeine may contribute additively to performance effects. The evidence is not without nuance, however — several reviews note that benefits tend to be somewhat larger for aerobic than anaerobic tasks, that individual responses vary based on genetics and habitual consumption patterns, and that earlier findings on whether caffeine and creatine interact negatively when co-administered remain a point of ongoing discussion. Most of the underlying research has been conducted in young men, and because the majority of studies have examined isolated caffeine rather than whole coffee, drawing firm conclusions specifically about coffee as a beverage requires some caution, as acknowledged by multiple review authors.