Workout warriors are on a never-ending journey to become increasingly fit, and a pre-training coffee session will definitely help you get jacked up.

Health and fitness sources routinely debate whether java or water are the best workout fluids to consume. Few reject the idea of proper hydration, but H2O cannot drive intensity like caffeine-rich coffee.

Let’s be real, people reach for a morning cup of Joe on their way to work, while studying for exams, during business meetings, and intimate conversation among many others. This is not some global coincidence.

Millions of coffee drinkers understand at an intuitive level that caffeinated beverages, particularly good coffee, up to your personal ante in a positive fashion. Rather than spending valuable workout time shopping for and choosing good coffee beans for your pre-workout mixture, choose a coffee of the month club for convenience.

Here are five ways that coffee can supercharge your workouts.

Coffee Increases Strength

Bodybuilders and powerlifters enjoy quoting 19th Century philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. You know, the guy who penned the phrase, “That which does not kill you makes you stronger.” If that seems like an odd segue into a discussion about drinking coffee, hold on to your weight belt.

Many hardcore gym rats wouldn’t dream of hitting the iron without a couple of cups of coffee in their system. Highly trained athletes have an acute sense of how their bodies feel and what impacts them.

Simply put, strength athletes drink coffee and feel good. It just works. But there’s plenty of science to support their pre-workout beverage choice.

Aside from a highly focused mind, the most powerful strength stimulator in the human body is the adrenal gland. This small gland is located above the kidneys. One of its primary functions is to enable physiological fight-or-flight responses. It succeeds in this effort by releasing the powerful hormone adrenaline.

When adrenaline floods the human body, every system becomes enhanced. This includes things such as heart rates, oxygenation, and muscle contractions. When you drink coffee, the caffeine in each cup stimulates that tiny gland to release significant amounts of adrenaline.

To partially quote Nietzsche again, coffee “makes you stronger.”

Coffee Helps Burn Fat

Fitness enthusiasts looking to trim their waistline and earn six-pack abs engage in all manner of things to give them an edge:

• Low-carb diets
• Endless hours on the treadmill
• Even unhealthy choices like reaching for diet pills

A better weight loss option maybe just having a few cups of coffee before exercising. Diet pills are a profoundly unhealthy and potentially dangerous way to address weight loss. They generally accomplish the task by suppressing the body’s natural desire to take in nutrients, minerals, and calories. These drugs are often laced with controlled substances that can be the first step to addiction.

This stands starkly outside the positive health and wellness lifestyle of many gym-goers. Instead, coffee can be a wonderfully healthy burn-burning aid. Numerous studies have come to the same conclusion that caffeine in coffee has substantial calorie-burning benefits. The science behind coffee being a calorie burner stems from its ability to induce thermogenesis. That is simply a fancy way of saying that your body temperature increases.

A study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition supported the notion of coffee as a strong calorie-burning aid. The results of that research indicated that “caffeine-induced a thermogenic response of 6 percent.”

Basically, drinking coffee heats up your physiology and increases calorie burn during workouts.

Other research points to coffee improving health by slowing weight gain entirely. The following excerpt comes from a

Livestrong article:

“One study, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology in 2015, studied the dietary habits of more than 93,000 people to look for patterns between coffee consumption and weight. The study authors observed that people who drank more coffee had a lower risk of obesity, as well as a lower risk of type 2 diabetes. A study with laboratory animals, published in Nutrition & Diabetes in 2014, found that mice that consumed coffee and were fed a high-fat diet gained weight more slowly than the mice that didn’t drink coffee.”

There’s no escaping the science about coffee. A couple of cups before a workout increases body temperature, helps burn calories more effectively, and has profound, long-term health benefits.

Coffee Gives You Laser-Focus in the Gym

People from all walks of life drink coffee to help negotiate things such as staying up to cram for a final exam, drive home late at night after a long day or keep from dozing off. There’s a reason that everyday people utilize coffee in this fashion.

Coffee makes us more alert and focused, and that can be a boon in the gym. Scientific studies repeatedly point to a link between drinking coffee and prefrontal lobe stimulation in the brain. As a natural stimulant, coffee has a wealth of positive effects on the brain, and research appears to indicate it may even provide benefits for people who are managing conditions such as ADHD.

In terms of improved sports focus, research conclusions published in Livestrong state that it can “help sustain exercise intensity and also improve concentration.” The article goes on to say the following:

“Caffeine has also been found to play a role in greater concentration in rifle marksmanship and target detection during simulated combat practice in the military, indicating caffeine can increase concentration to cope with stressful activities.”

Enjoying a laser focus during intense training sessions can lead to only one thing: Gains!

Coffee Reduces Muscle Pain

The old gym saying, “no pain, no gain,” can be a bit of a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, it refers to “good” muscle soreness that lets you know growth is underway. On the other hand, veteran athletes and workout warriors understand that pushing through the “pain barrier” can help maximize training benefits. This is where coffee comes into the equation.

Research indicates that drinking coffee can reduce post-training aches and pains by as much as 48 percent. This means all that discomfort you experience from pushing your body can be significantly curbed. Think about engaging in a training session while still dealing with muscle aches. That will definitely put a damper on your intensity.

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The 15 Terrible Coffee Side-Effects You Need to Know About

Coffee Can Help Prevent Ailments and Disease

The fundamental point of living a fitness lifestyle is better health. Regular exercise can improve blood pressure, heart function, and cognitive abilities and provide many other benefits. The bottom line is that working out makes us healthier and coffee has a powerful connection to disease prevention along with health benefits that allow us to double-down on excellent training sessions.

Consider these coffee benefits in the context of effective workouts:

• Joint Pain Reduction: Coffee reportedly reduces wrist, hand, neck, and back pain.
• Diabetes: Coffee helps the body tolerate insulin more effectively.
• Depression: A recent study shows that women who drink 2-3 cups of coffee per day were less likely to suffer depressive symptoms.
• Cancer: The antioxidants found in coffee reportedly help reduce the risk of cancer.

Drinking coffee has been linked to reducing the risk of a wide range of ailments including Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease, and many others.

At the end of the day, drinking coffee promotes overall health and wellness that allows fitness enthusiasts to enjoy a healthy vibrant lifestyle, so reach for your convenient coffee maker and then hit the gym!