Kelsey HigginsonSports Nutrition Coach and Founder at Clutch Day Coaching

What type of caffeine should athletes use!

14 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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In this instructional YouTube segment, Kelsey Higginson explains how athletes can use caffeine as a performance‑enhancing supplement. She outlines the optimal dosage—approximately 3 to 6 mg of caffeine per kilogram of body weight—and provides a concrete example: a 150‑lb (≈67 kg) athlete would need about 190 mg of caffeine. Higginson then recommends caffeine sources that allow precise dosing, such as pure caffeine powder, caffeinated electrolyte mixes, and caffeine gum, arguing that these are superior to coffee or energy drinks, which contain excess ingredients and are harder to dose accurately.

Chapters

What type of caffeine should athletes use? Typically when we think caffeine, we're thinking coffee or energy drinks. Yes, this has caffeine in it. However, if you're using caffeine as a supplement to help improve your endurance or your performance pregame, you want to find something that's a little bit more dosageable. To see benefits from caffeine, you want to have about 3 to 6 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. So for like a 150-pound athlete, that's going to be about 67 kilos. So that means you want to multiply that 67 kilos By 3, that's gonna give us about 190 milligrams of caffeine. That's the dosage that we're kind of looking for to start off with. So we wanna find a caffeine source to do that. That could be a good powder source. There's some electrolytes that are caffeinated. Caffeinated gum can be a great option to dose that out as well. I just think it's gonna be a lot better than slamming down some hot coffee before a game or an energy drink full of a bunch of other things that your body doesn't need.