Date of Award

Summer 1974

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Education (MSEd)

Department

Human Movement Sciences

Program/Concentration

Physical Education

Committee Director

Melvin H. Williams

Committee Member

Gerald S. George

Call Number for Print

Special Collections LD4331.E44 P47

Abstract

A limited number of investigations dealing with the effects of caffeine upon human physical performance have been conducted. Since caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant and it is a constituent of the popularly-consumed beverages - coffee, tea, and cola drinks, it would appear that numerous studies would have been conducted in order to determine the effect of caffeine upon human muscular performance. At any rate, there is a dearth of studies on this topic and the findings of the conducted experiments are equivocal and ambiguous.

The purpose of the present study was to determine the effects of various doses of caffeine upon the following parameters: resting heart rate, submaximal exercise heart rate at the workloads of 300, 400, and 500 kpm, maximal exercise heart rate, maximal muscular endurance time, subjective ratings of perceived exertion at the workloads of 300, 400, and 500 kpm, and the maximal subjective rating of perceived exertion.

Subjects in this study consisted of a group of fourteen college females. All of the testing was performed in the Human Performance Laboratory at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Each subject was involved in six testing periods which included two practice trials and four testing periods. Specific doses of either 0 mg of citrated caffeine per kg of body weight, 4 mg/kg, 7 mg/kg, and 10 mg/kg were administered to the subjects at each testing period. The performance test was a ride to exhaustion on the bicycle ergometer while the heart rate was monitored continuously.

This study was of a repeated measures design where all of the treatments were counterbalanced. The 0 mg/kg dose of citrated caffeine was considered to be the placebo treatment. The order of treatments was unknown to the subjects and the investigator, thus making this a double blind study.

Within the limitations of this study, it was found that there were no statistically significant effects of various doses of caffeine upon the tested parameters .

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DOI

10.25777/kav6-s737

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