Research

Hormonal

Caffeine ingestion (5 mg/kg) does not improve maximal anaerobic power or capacity during the Wingate Test in untrained subjects, despite increasing catecholamine and lactate levels.

If you are not a trained athlete, taking 5mg/kg of caffeine before a short, high-intensity effort (like a 30-second sprint) is unlikely to improve your performance. While it will increase your stress hormones and lactate, it won't make you faster or stronger in that specific context.

ModerateRefutesMEDIUM confidence
Caffeine administration did not significantly change either maximal anaerobic capacity (AC) or power (AP) and power decrease (PD)... These data suggest that caffeine, essentially via epinephrine, modifies glycolytic metabolism but fails to improve performance during the Wingate Anaerobic Test in nonspecifically trained subjects.
Katia Collomp et al. · International Journal of Sports Medicine · 1991

Why this rating

Small sample size (n=6), single session, untrained subjects; limits generalizability.

Source

Effects of Caffeine Ingestion on Performance and Anaerobic Metabolism during the Wingate Test

Katia Collomp et al. · International Journal of Sports Medicine · 1991

DOI 10.1055/s-2007-1024710

crossover · n=6Cited 166×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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