Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights_ - Alex Hutchinson [103]
In pre-Olympic tests, researchers found that the athletes lowered their internal temperature by more than 1°F by drinking the slushies, which consisted of 14 mL per kilogram of body weight of a half-and-half mix of sports drink and water. This translated into an advantage of about one minute in a 79-minute cycling time trial compared to controls. Plunging into a cold bath at 54°F (12°C) for 10 minutes cooled the cyclists even more—so much, in fact, that they started the time trial too fast and faded in the latter stages. That left the slushie as the best option.
Further research by scientists at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia, published in 2010, has confirmed the benefits of “ice slurries.” In this study, the subjects drank either a slushie at 30°F (-1°C) or cold water at 39°F (4°C). Thanks to the phase change energy, the slushie group decreased their rectal temperature by 1.19°F (0.66°C) and lasted 50.2 minutes in a cycle test to exhaustion in the heat, while the cold water group cooled by just 0.45°F (0.25°C) and lasted only 40.7 minutes.
Interestingly, the slushie group managed to keep biking until their core temperature reached 39.36°C, while the cold water group was forced to stop at 39.05°C—a small but significant difference. The researchers speculate that the subjects may have cooled their brains slightly as the slushies passed through their mouth and throat. Since the decision to terminate exercise in the heat is thought to be controlled centrally, a cooler brain may have permitted the rest of the body to get a little hotter than usual before calling a halt. Earlier studies with dogs and goats have suggested that brain temperature, rather than core temperature, might control the limit of exercise tolerance in the heat.
The performance boost offered by slushies, ultimately, is a few percent at most. But it’s a simple intervention that could easily be implemented at big sporting events—far more easily than ice baths, and far more cheaply than cooling vests. That’s one reason the Australians brought seven slushie machines to Beijing and used them for soccer, track, cycling, triathlon, rowing, field hockey, and several other sports. The other reason is familiar to every athlete looking for a slight edge wherever he or she can find it: the mental boost. “In Beijing, we wanted something new,” Burke admitted. “You always have to have something new for athletes for that placebo effect.”
Will drinking coffee help or hinder my performance?
Until 2004, Olympic athletes could test positive for caffeine if they drank as few as three cups of strong coffee. Then, frustrated with trying to regulate such a commonly used substance, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) removed caffeine from its list of restricted substances—and the strangest thing happened. After the ban was lifted, caffeine levels found in WADA urine tests actually decreased in almost all sports. If it wasn’t worth banning, athletes apparently figured, it wasn’t worth taking.
They were wrong.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that caffeine is a very powerful ergogenic [performance enhancing] aid,” says University of Guelph professor Terry Graham, one of the world’s leading researchers on the topic. “It’s probably the most versatile aid out there.” After decades of studies, it’s now well established that caffeine helps sprint performance and improves endurance in activities lasting up to two hours. There’s also increasingly solid evidence that it helps resistance exercise like weightlifting.
The usual counterargument is that caffeine’s diuretic effect