Cyclists love coffee. Serious two-wheeled roadsters always include several café stops in their cycling adventures. Would it not be nice to know why caffeine is an essential aspect of the cycling tradition? Would you also love to learn the 15 benefits of coffee for cyclists and which coffee is the best? If you do, it would be wise to read this article.
Benefits of Coffee for Cyclists
1. Jump Starts Your Cycling Adventure
Everyone knows how coffee can give you a huge energy boost. That is why many cyclists always jump-start their cycling adventures with a double shot of espresso.
Its 100 mg caffeine content should give you enough energy to shake off your early morning drowsiness and ready to conquer the trail. Refrain from adding cream or sugar to maximize caffeine’s energy-boosting capabilities.
2. Sustains Your Energy
If a double shot of espresso can get you up to speed in your cycling run, pumping more caffeine into your system can help you sustain your momentum.
A medium-sized Americano should do the trick because it contains about 150 to 180 mg of caffeine. Adding skimmed milk will give you extra proteins that heighten energy and sustain muscle performance.
3. Promotes Faster Recovery
Coffee can also aid in your post-cycling recovery. However, it is best to whittle down on the caffeine content and focus more on increasing protein and carbohydrate levels. That is why the best coffee to drink after several hours of cycling is a caffe mocha or a latte.
Adding full-fat milk gives you more proteins and other nutrients essential for tissue repair, recovery, and regeneration.
4. Enhances Cycling Performance
Studies show that caffeine can improve exercise performance and endurance. Ideally, you will want to drink no more than 200 mg of caffeine to maximize its performance-enhancing benefits. Drinking more can lead to gastrointestinal upsets, mental confusion, nervousness, and lack of focus. You do not want these symptoms to affect your cycling enjoyment negatively.
5. Improves Focus and Concentration
Cycling requires absolute concentration. Not only are you focusing on the power of every pedal you make. You also pay attention to your surroundings. Drinking coffee improves your cognitive performance, allowing numerous brain cells to work together to process a multitude of information.
Cyclists have to concentrate on their speed while maintaining balance and optimum coordination between the limbs and the eyes.
6. Modulates Central Nervous System Fatigue
Everyone knows that caffeine is a mild central nervous system stimulant. It mobilizes calcium in the brain and inhibits the action of certain neurotransmitters. It also boosts dopamine production and improves blood flow while ensuring adequate neural nutrition and oxygenation.
Your brain will never feel tired with a caffeine boost to start your cycling adventure.
7. Prevents Glycogen Depletion
Your muscles need energy with every pedal you make on your bicycle. Your body stores glucose in your muscles in the form of glycogen. When you pedal your bike, your leg muscles will mobilize glycogen and convert it into energy.
Drinking coffee spares your muscles’ glycogen stores by promoting more efficient fat utilization. Your body uses the released fat molecules for fuel. It sustains your cycling activities without depleting your glycogen stores.
8. Improves Mental Alertness
Caffeine’s action on dopamine allows it to improve blood flow despite its ability to constrict blood vessels and increase blood pressure. The modest blood pressure increase allows blood to reach the brain faster, allowing brain cells to coordinate their activities and promote mental alertness.
Cyclists do not only have to focus on the road. They also have to maintain situational awareness, allowing them to dodge obstacles. It lets them process the different circumstances as they pedal their way through the streets and country roads.
9. Facilitates Oxygen and Nutrient Delivery
Caffeine also ensures adequate circulation to other body parts. For a cyclist, this is very important.
Cycling requires lower body strength and endurance. You can only achieve this if your leg and lower body muscles receive adequate oxygen and nutrients. The only way you can guarantee this is by improving blood flow. Thankfully, caffeine is quite efficient in this task.
10. Strengthens Muscle Contractions
Drinking coffee stimulates more powerful muscle contractions, allowing you to pedal your bicycle with less effort.
Studies show that caffeine increases calcium ion release to increase muscle fiber sensitivity. It results in more forceful muscle contractions that can benefit modern-day cyclists.
11. Reduces Feelings of Pain
Did you know that doctors call dopamine the pleasure neurotransmitter? It is a substance that makes you feel good because it acts on parts of the brain that regulate reward. Because of the boost in mood, dopamine can also modulate pain sensations.
Experiencing pain less often lets you enjoy cycling. It also allows you to go the distance. That is why many cyclists drink coffee because of its dopamine-boosting capability.
12. Promotes Fat Loss
Not many people realize that drinking coffee can promote up to 30% burning of fat molecules. Even if you are obese, you can still enjoy up to 10% of fat loss. The leaner the cyclist is, the more efficient is his fat-burning capabilities.
Hence, drinking black coffee or espresso can further improve your fat loss. You will be able to ride your bike a lot better.
13. Increases Metabolic Rate
Caffeine stimulates the sympathetic nervous system to increase almost every vital body function. It improves alertness, focus, and other cognitive processes, too.
Increasing the metabolic rate can help cyclists achieve more when they go out on their bikes.
14. Reduces Risk of Accidents During Cycling
Drinking coffee before you ride your bike enhances your focus, concentration, and alertness. Caffeine also improves your reflexes. It allows you to take the correct action in an emergency instantly.
Situational awareness during cycling improves your chances of getting home alive and in one piece.
15. A Great Excuse to Have a Much-Needed Break
Cycling is always best when performed with your buddies. Getting a much-needed coffee break at designated caffeine stops strengthens your social relationships.
Bottom Line
Now that you have an idea about the 15 benefits of coffee for cyclists and which coffee is the best, do you not think it is high time to include caffeine in your cycling routine, too? You will be more than thrilled about how caffeine can boost your cycling performance.
