Coffee Beats Caffeine

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Coffee Beats Caffeine

In our July cover story interview, actor Brock O’Hurn rather sheepishly admitted that he often prefers a plain cup of coffee before hitting the gym rather than a fancy caffeine-based supplement. It looks like O’Hurn was on to something.

A study published in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research examined groups of lifters who were given either coffee, caffeine pills, decaf coffee plus caffeine pills, or a placebo. The subjects who drank coffee were able to perform more squats to exhaustion than the others. Interestingly, the ones who drank decaf and took caffeine pills performed better than those who only took the pills, leading researchers to believe that coffee contains other stimulatory ingredients besides caffeine or substances that somehow amplify caffeine’s effects. The coffee drinkers drank instant coffee, which contain more caffeine than brewed coffee, and consumed the equivalent of five milligrams per kilogram of bodyweight.