Caffeine Supplementation and Time to Exhaustion at Peak Aerobic Velocity

Guimarães MP^1,2, Matheus JLN¹, Azevedo HAM¹ and Azevedo PHSM^1,2

¹Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisas em Fisiologia do Exercício, Brasil

²Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências do Movimento Humano e Reabilitação, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Santos, Brasil

*Corresponding Author: Paulo Henrique Silva Marques de Azevedo
Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências do Movimento Humano e Reabilitação
Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Santos, Brasil
E-mail: paulo.azevedo@unifesp.br

Received: February 10, 2020 Accepted: March 10, 2020 Published: March 17, 2020

Citation: Guimarães MP, Matheus JLN, Azevedo HAM, Azevedo PHSM (2020) Caffeine Supplementation and Time to Exhaustion at Peak Aerobic Velocity. J Athl Enhanc 9:1.

Objective: We aimed to verify whether the caffeine supplementation has the potential to improve performance of the women athletes running until exhaustion at peak velocity when the positive expectancy is abolished.

Methods: We recruited ten women moderately trained in running with peak velocity of 13.40 ± 1.0 km•h-1. They came to the laboratory 7 times: a) familiarization; b) incremental test to determine the peak velocity; c) five different sessions of running at peak velocity until exhaustion. The participants were informed that they could be ingesting caffeine, placebo or acid lactic, and another trial with open caffeine (informed). We did not make suggestions of what they could be consuming. Nevertheless, they consumed the ergogenic aid (caffeine) that improves performance (according to the current paradigm) in all sessions (except for familiarization and control sessions).

Results: The main findings are 1) caffeine has a low chance to be an ergogenic aid; 2) expectancy matters more than the physiological effect of caffeine to improve performance.

Conclusion: Therefore, the performance improvement seems to be expectancy-dependent and we do not recommend caffeine as an ergogenic aid.