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Caffeine:
Does caffeine boost competitive female athletes?
from
peak
performance
Ergogenic
aids for sports performance are not a new topic for
research but there is always room for new evidence
to support existing arguments. A paper by Coghill
and co-workers at the Exercise and Health Research
Unit at the University of Bristol investigated the
effect of caffeine ingestion in competitive female
runners - much of the previous research has examined
males.
Eight females were asked to run for 40 minutes at an
intensity of 65% V02max on two occasions, one with a
caffeine supplement of 7mg/kg of body-mass and the
other with a placebo. The physiological responses
were measured during each of these submaximal
efforts on the treadmill, as blood was taken at
5,10, 20, 30 and 40 minutes during each run. The
rating of perceived exertion (RPE) was also noted
for each subject under each condition to enable a
comparison.
It
was found that the caffeine ingestion before
exercise led to a decrease in the RPE of the runners
as well as an increase in the blood glucose during
the 40-minute run compared with the placebo
condition. The implication is that such caffeine
supplementation could be of benefit to endurance
performance, though it should be stressed that the
run performance used here was submaximal and not a
replication of a race situation.
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