The Effects of Caffeine on Athletic Performance

On May 25, members of the CMJ Masterpass joined me, Chad Macias, Danny Lennon, and Alex Leaf in a live Zoom meeting to ask us anything about sports nutrition, and here’s the full recording!

We talk about things like:

• Is there a risk of depleting histidine with beta-alanine supplementation?
• What’s the best form of fuel to use during a workout? Candy, or something else?
• Nutritional strategies for recovery from soft tissue injuries to muscles, tendons and ligaments from lifting?
• Is AMPK the primary regulator of mitochondrial biogenesis in muscle, and does it matter?
• Can riboflavin help with exercise performance?
• Why the post-workout anabolic window DOES matter, and why you should NOT eat too much protein BEFORE lifting.
• Take BCAAs, or just eat protein?
• Should athletes cycle caffeine, and does it matter if they are fast or slow oxidizers?
• Nitric oxide: does it have important effects by modifying proteins, rather than just affecting blood flow?
• Is it delayed-onset muscle soreness if it happens all the time? Or is it a pathology?
• Transdermal carnosine (Lactigo) for fibromyalgia, the role of glutamate and neurotoxicity in fibromyalgia and delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS), and my own experience with using high blood glutamate to identify how acidity was wrecking me after workouts.
• Maximizing muscle growth and optimizing performance on a low-protein diet.
• Best time to take Tru Niagen (nicotinamide riboside) and TMG (trimethylglycine), especially the purpose of increasing exercise tolerance.
• How important are refeeds for dieters?
• Carbohydrate periodization for endurance athletes?
• Is there any value to training low during those times where you depend on glucose to either try to train your body to better tap into limited glycogen stores or to try to create a better aerobic response?
• Besides leucine, what could help increase protein synthesis to prevent sarcopenia in older adults who strength-train regularly? 
• For muscle growth, what generally applies to everyone?

All this and much more!

If you’d like to participate in the next Q&A, consider joining the CMJ Masterpass. Use this link to get a 10% lifetime discount: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/masterpass/masteringnutrition

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In this episode, you will find all of the following and more:

02:54 Is there a risk of depleting histidine with beta-alanine supplementation?

08:40 What’s the best form of fuel to use during a workout. Candy, or something else?

19:17 Nutritional strategies for recovery from soft tissue injuries to muscles, tendons and ligaments from lifting?

22:55 Is AMPK the primary regulator of mitochondrial biogenesis in muscle or are there other important pathways that need to be considered and which can be targeted by nutrition in addition to endurance training?

28:43 Can riboflavin help with exercise performance?

39:30 Why the post-workout anabolic window DOES matter.

44:26 Does the form of HMB matter?

49:07 Why you should NOT eat too much protein BEFORE lifting.

54:34 Take BCAAs, or just eat protein?

59:13 Summarizing the things that help with muscle growth.

1:00:28  How should caffeine be cycled if being used to enhance weightlifting performance and/or weight loss? Is there a difference for fast or slow metabolizers of caffeine?

1:04:25 More on caffeine

1:09:30 Caffeine for weightlifters

1:14:30  Nitric oxide: does it have important effects by modifying proteins, rather than just affecting blood flow?

1:20:42 Is it delayed-onset muscle soreness if it happens all the time? Or is it a pathology?

1:24:34 Transdermal carnosine (Lactigo) for fibromyalgia. My own experience with using high blood glutamate to identify how acidity was wrecking me after workouts.

1:30:04 The role of extracellular glutamate and neurotoxicity driving DOMS and fibromyalgia. 

1:31:46 Recommendations for maximizing muscle growth and optimizing performance on a low-protein diet.

1:41:59 Best time to take Tru Niagen (nicotinamide riboside) and TMG (trimethylglycine) especially the purpose of increasing exercise tolerance.

1:52:24 How important are refeeds for dieters?

1:54:42 Carbohydrate periodization for endurance athletes.

1:59:12 Is there any value to training low during those times where you depend on glucose to either try to train your body to better tap into limited glycogen stores or to try to create a better aerobic response?

2:08:27 Besides leucine, what could help increase protein synthesis to prevent sarcopenia in older adults who strength-train regularly?

Access the show notes, transcript, and comments here:

https://chrismasterjohnphd.substack.com/p/068-ask-us-anything-about-sports