Cafe, Cafe! Can Coffee help your lifting?

Carlos Andica, LG, Gwendolyn Sisto, Ivan Rojas,
friend, and Olympic Silver Medalist Diego Salazar

It is no secret that I love coffee. Well, not just coffee, but good coffee.  However, coffee seems to either get ravingly positive reviews or extremely negative ones.  So, let's examine the weightlifting culture and health benefits a bit closer.


Coffee and weightlifting are very compatible. Historically, weightlifters from all around the world drink coffee. When training in Colombia, one of my favorite pasttimes was visiting new cafe's to get exquisitely fresh coffee. Lifters like Carlos Andica and Diego Salazar (Olympic Silver medalist)n tend to drink Cafe Tinto; me, I drink it con leche.  In Bulgaria, they also enjoyed unfiltered expresso--well, not as much as whiskey or beer (see my post on Nikolai Peschalov from 2008).  Coffee is pretty easy to find all around the world from Romania, Guatemala, Iceland, and even Beijing.

Coffee at an Icelandic Cafe in Reykjavik

In terms of lifting, there is nothing like a Latte, after a full day at work plus 1-2 hour drive home, right before lifting.  I really don't think that it is NOT just the caffeine.  Rather, fresh, high quality coffee is rich in antioxidants.  Now, drinking acidic, 5 hour old coffee, probably won't give the same effect. Further, Caffeinated "energy drinks" fall flat compared to fresh, bold roasts.

Still, these are just my experiential inklings on coffee's effectiveness...let's see what Science thinks:    There have been many studies on the effectiveness and healthiness of coffee. For example, an AARP study showed people who drank more coffee, "Compared with people who drank no coffee at all, men and women who drank six or more cups per day were 10% and 15% less likely, respectively, to die during the study." (http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/16/health/coffee-drinking-longer-life/index.html) .  Wow, elderly coffee drinkers were 15% more likely to out live their non-coffee drinking counterparts. In otherwords, coffee might give you super powers.

What I also find interesting, is that you can always find studies that show negative effects of coffee.  After reading this post -(http://www.bulletproofexec.com/coffee-5-reasons-you-can-perform-better-10-ways-to-live-longer/)- I'm starting to think that its just the 5 hour old, crappy, moldy, light roast coffee that is bad for you.  In this article, they describe how lower quality coffees contain mold, which is a toxin to humans, and hence can give negative effects.

In summary - yes, drinking high quality expresso, probably is good for you and your lifting.  Never cheap out on your expresso.