Magnesium and creatine, two things that are better than coffee before a workout!

Do you get tired before training? We tell you which two things can be better than caffeine for a kick.

Caffeine and robbing the sleep bank

Too many of us see the sleep bank as an account filled with hours, minutes and seconds. When we don't have enough time for our waking activities, we take a little bit out of this account. We don't think about repayment as much.

The punishment then is fatigue. But this can be warded off with a little caffeine, which jump-starts the nervous system, and we don't feel the lack of sleep for a while. Athletes rely on caffeine because it helps them get through a workout that would otherwise be sleepy and energyless.

The problem is that caffeine may not improve performance as much as we thought. That is, according to the latest study. But don't worry. There are other common substances that might work even better than caffeine for shuffling the sleep bank.

What did they do?

Researchers took 10 recreational athletes around the age of 21, divided them into 3 groups, and gave them a placebo, 3 mg of caffeine per kilo of weight, or 6 mg of caffeine per kilo of weight.

The subjects then practiced biceps raises and overhead lunges, and the researchers measured their concentric and eccentric strength at 60 and 180 degrees of flexion.

What did they find?

Caffeine had no effect, at either dose, on concentric or eccentric arm strength. And it had no effect on eccentric leg strength either. But both doses of caffeine had a significant effect on peak concentric leg strength, at 180°. The higher dose also had an effect on peak concentric strength during repeated contractions (multiple repetitions).

What does this mean?

The researchers' conclusion is that caffeine has no effect on upper-body power or strength, but it appears that it may help lower-body strength. If these conclusions are correct, caffeine may not be as versatile a stimulant as we thought. At least when it comes to weight training. However, it certainly worked well for the lower body.

What I'm missing from the study is the sleep deprivation element. Would caffeine work on both halves of the body if the subjects were sleep-deprived? I think so. More importantly, however, there are supplements that may work better than caffeine.

Expand the sleep bank with magnesium or creatine

Japanese researchers found that when men with chronic sleep deprivation (40% of the normal dose) were given 100 mg of magnesium per day, these men performed as well as if they were not exhausted. Their aerobic performance and strength were not affected at all by sleep deprivation.

That sleep deprivation lowers magnesium levels is known, but this condition also increases levels of norepinephrine, a close relative of adrenaline that constricts blood vessels. Magnesium, on the other hand, dilates them, which may negate the effects of norepinephrine. This may explain the effects of magnesium on people suffering from sleep deprivation.

Creatine may be an even better solution for sleep deprivation. It seems that a single dose of 5-10g of creatine 90 minutes before training can get performance back to normal.

The logic is that creatine can restore the energy-rich phosphate store that is depleted by sleep deprivation, thereby restoring nervous system capacity.

How to use this information?

If you believe our study, strong coffee before a workout can help with lower body performance, but not so much with the top. However, we don't know if this is also true with sleep deprivation.

However, it would be foolish to think that caffeine won't improve your overall athletic performance through a nervous system kick.

However, caffeine also constricts blood vessels, which lack of blood actually chemically speaking constricts.

For this reason, a dose of 100 mg of magnesium per day and 5-10 g of creatine 90 minutes before training could be at least an equivalent option to improve the performance of muscles that have not been afforded enough sleep.

Source: www.t-nation.com
- Tallis J, Yavuz HCM, "The Effects of Low and Moderate Dose Caffeine Supplementation on Upper and Lower Body Maximal Voluntary Concentric and Eccentric Muscle Force," Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2017 Oct 24.
- Tanabe K, Yamamoto A, Suzuki N, Osada N, Yokoyama Y, Samejima H, Seki A, Oya M, Murabayashi T, Nakayama M, Yamamoto M, Omiya K, Itoh H, Murayama M."Efficacy of oral magnesium administration on decreased exercise tolerance in a state of chronic sleep deprivation," Jpn Circ J. 1998 May;62(5):341-6.
- Christian J Cook, Blair T Crewther, Liam P Kilduff, Scott Drawer, and Chris M Gaviglio."Skill execution and sleep deprivation: effects of acute caffeine or creatine supplementation - a randomized placebo-controlled trial," J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2011;8:2.
Author: LC Tuoma
Translated by Jaromír Uhlíř