Ask A Cycling Coach podcast 499: Halloween edition

Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast
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I have just listened to the latest podcast on the study that investigated whether it makes sense to drink coffee after workouts. I cringed and audibly commented several times, this was a Halloween episode, a study of horrors. Going to failure. Several times. Muscle biopsies (plural). Inadequate nutrition. Go to failure again. We just want to be sure, you really are out of glycogen. How did they even find subjects?!

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No costumes on the Halloween episode either. Missed opportunity. :rofl:

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You had me confused with the title for a minute there :smile:

:jack_o_lantern:

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ME TOO :flushed:

Truly gruesome.

I believe through coaches, sports nutritionists and social media :face_with_peeking_eye:. Masochists like many of us endurance athletes? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Listen to @Jonathan’s description and everything will clear up. Even just the first workout sounded quite brutal. Little did I know that this was just the beginning …

I laughed that the participants had to promise not to exercise the next day or next few days. I doubt anyone of them was tempted … :rofl:

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If I’m honest, sorry @SarahLaverty , I stopped watching after a while - the details were going over my head one after the other so I skipped forward to get the key takeaways but they weren’t clear to me.

I think I should have a coffee after the morning workout as well as before, but I suspect I don’t consume a level of caffeine (70ml ground, filtered) relevant to any gains.

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No need to apologise! Your feedback is appreciated. What would make these study review episodes more engaging for you?

Here are some key takeaways from this study:

  • The researchers found that consuming coffee with milk sped up muscle glyocgen resynthesis in the initial hours after exercise.
  • If you have a second workout later in the day (as could be the case for triathletes like yourself), adding coffee to your morning recovery drink could improve your performance in the second workout due to an increased rate of muscle glycogen resynthesis, initially.
    -We all respond to caffeine differently and the extent to which it impacts our sleep, anxiety etc is individual. Start low, go slow and monitor whether you notice improvements in subsequent workouts.
  • Monitor your levels of anxiety, and your body’s ability to get into parasympathetic state (rest and digest). This is essential to the overall recovery process and increasing your coffee intake could interfere with this.
  • If you don’t have another workout later in the day, adding coffee to your recovery drink likely won’t impact your glocgen levels or performance in your workout the following day.
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Can I make it mocha for added boost? :crazy_face:

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Thankfully I’m allergic to coffee. I now have a reason to fail that second workout. @_*

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I was no longer listening to the study itself, my mind focused on the gruesome details of the testing procedure. Run empty twice, denied proper food, repeatedly poked and prodded – and then pumped full of a ginormous dose of caffeine.

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Thanks very much Sarah, I’m sure it’s not the presenter but the audience in my case. I listen to far too much content in general, plus a high cognitive overload working week just means I’m mostly a bullet points kind of guy at the moment. The good news is that the training is the easy part of any given day :smiley:

So I’m seeing a lot more lattès and cappuccinos in my near future - beats the hell out of tart cherry, sodium bicarbonate and the other crazy stuff out there :+1:

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