preview

The Effect Of Caffeine On Caffeine And Endurance Performance

Better Essays

In this literature review, I will be analysing the literature on Caffeine Ingestion and Endurance Performance.
Endurance performance according to Farlex, 2003, ‘is a performance where key muscles are exercised at submaximal intensity for prolonged periods of time’, without the onset of fatigue.
Caffeine is a, stimulant which affects the central nervous system (CNS) (Farlex, 2003) and it has also been found to increase the fat oxidation and metabolism of free fatty acids, FFA, (Essig, Costill, and Van Handel, 1980; Hadjicharalambous et al., 2006), during aerobic respiration through the release ‘epinephrine’ as stated by Spriet et al., 1992.
Caffeine is an ‘alkaloid’ (Farlex, 2003) and according to Spriet, 2014, is commonly used ‘work enhancing supplement’ which has been researched thoroughly since the 1970’s, due to caffeine’s potential to improve performance through its ergogenic effect. Caffeine’s ergogenic effect targets the CNS, as caffeine is a ‘adenosine antagonist’ (Davis et al., 2002; McCall, Millington, Wurtman,. 1982) Caffeine has a very similar structure adenosine (Fredholm, B, B et.al., 1999) which enables the caffeine to pass through the blood brain barrier (McCall, A.L., Millington, W.R. and Wurtman, R.J. 1982) and block the adenosine receptors and therefore delays the onset of fatigue (Graham, 2001) and create a greater sense of wakefulness and alertness while also improving reaction time. This is achieved throught the blocking of the adenosine receptors

Get Access