Research

Mixed

Caffeine does not significantly enhance upper-body muscle endurance (bench press repetitions) at any tested dose (2, 4, or 6 mg/kg).

If you are doing single-set upper-body endurance tests (like bench press to failure at 60% 1RM), caffeine is unlikely to help you perform more repetitions, regardless of the dose. This contrasts with lower-body endurance, where caffeine is effective.

GoodRefutesHIGH confidence
For upper-body muscle endurance, we did not find significant effects of caffeine.
Jozo Grgić et al. · International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance · 2019

Why this rating

Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover design.

Source

What Dose of Caffeine to Use: Acute Effects of 3 Doses of Caffeine on Muscle Endurance and Strength

Jozo Grgić et al. · International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance · 2019

DOI 10.1123/ijspp.2019-0433

crossover · n=28Cited 47×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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