Many athletes drink pre-workout drinks, training drinks and post-workout recovery drinks, but did you know that a drink helps us before, during and after exercising? It’s not about any miracle drink or anything like that, it’s coffee. A drink available to everyone, which you can prepare instantly with your tassimo coffee capsules and which is beneficial to health. Let’s see how it helps us and how we can include it in our balanced diet.
Benefits of coffee for athletes
Are you an athlete and you love to drink coffee? Then you are in luck. This drink has enormous benefits for all those who practice sports regularly. On the other hand, if you are an athlete but do not drink coffee normally, here is a list of benefits so that you can start incorporating it into your diet. Take note, we will discover everything below!
Stimulating effect
Without a doubt, most athletes drink coffee for the stimulating effect of caffeine. It is a plant alkaloid that speeds up the heart rate, keeps us alert and invigorates us, so before a long training session, coffee helps us maintain energy for longer. But we should not only drink it before a workout, studies say that a coffee after training helps to recover better , since the levels of glycogen in the muscles are 66% higher than if we do not drink it.
Decrease in pain
Other advantages of coffee for athletes is that it helps us reduce pain both in training and afterwards. Drinking coffee before training helps reduce muscle soreness during training sessions, but it will also help relieve pain that occurs afterward. Of course, it should be a moderate consumption.
Weight loss
The benefits of drinking coffee don’t end here. It is also a low calorie food that helps you lose weight as long as you do not add sugar, milk or cream. This is due to its satiating and digestive effect that acts as a substitute for other foods with a higher fat content.
Increased stamina
There are several studies that reveal that coffee helps improve physical endurance, delaying the onset of fatigue in athletes. It is estimated that the feeling of exhaustion appears up to 24% later, something that can be decisive in sports that require prolonged efforts such as cycling or running. In these aerobic sports, caffeine acts on the nervous, muscular and respiratory systems, allowing us to perform better for longer.
Performance improvement
Also in anaerobic sports, where we have to make a significant effort in a short period of time, coffee helps us. Here, the ergogenic effect increases, so that performance improves. It allows us to do a more intense and aggressive training at the same time that it helps us to recover better from the effort and to prevent the effects of excessive training. It also contributes to improving muscle hypertrophy from this workout.
How to include coffee in a balanced diet
Coffee can be part of a healthy diet without problems. If you look at the Pyramid of Healthy Hydration, coffee is on the second level, just above the base formed by water, on the same level as non-carbonated soft drinks, tea or infusions without sugar. Moreover, they occupy a priority place compared to milk, natural fruit juices and vegetable juices or sports drinks. Of course, it must be consumed in moderation, that is, with a maximum of 3 cups of 150 milliliters each a day, that is, 200 milligrams of caffeine per day.
You do not have to add cream, sugar or whole milk to the coffee. If you take it cut or with milk, you have to use skimmed milk to reduce the caloric intake and saturated fat, which will negatively affect our performance. Nor should we replace breakfast with several coffees, caffeine is not enough to start the day. Finally, avoid consuming coffee if you take iron supplements as it will reduce the absorption of this mineral, and your performance will suffer.
