Kelsey HigginsonSports Nutrition Coach and Founder at Clutch Day Coaching

Is coffee okay for athletes

30 Oct 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:49

In this concise video, the speaker explains that caffeine can improve race performance but must be consumed at an effective dose of 3–6 mg per kilogram of body weight about one hour before competition. Using a 68 kg example, she calculates a minimum of roughly 200 mg of caffeine, which is about three cups of coffee taken within an hour—an impractical amount that could upset the stomach. She therefore recommends using performance‑specific caffeine products such as caffeine gum or caffeine shots, which deliver the required dose more conveniently and with fewer gastrointestinal side effects.

Chapters

Caffeine can take seconds off of your time and can be the difference between winning and losing a race. So is it okay to use coffee as your form of caffeine? In order to see the performance benefit that caffeine can actually give you, you need to have at least 3 to 6 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, and you need to take it about 1 hour before your performance. So for example, me, a 68-kilogram female, the minimum amount of caffeine for my performance that I would need to be taking is 200 milligrams 1 hour before. One cup of coffee only has about 80 milligrams of caffeine, guys. Therefore, I would need to have about 3 cups of coffee within 1 hour of my performance, which is going to be a lot of fluids and probably going to be unsettling for my stomach. Therefore, I would use a different caffeine supplement such as caffeine gum or maybe even a caffeine shot that's made for performance so that it'll be way more effective and way easier to get the amount that you need to help you see the benefit.