Working out, training, practicing and coffee...

The title of this post is a bit rambling, and I suppose the content may be too.  In essence it is a collection of thoughts which grew out of my training a couple of days ago.  It is not uncommon to read about the performance enhancement effects of caffeine.  As any of you who know me can attest, I have a coffee problem.  And the problem is I love the stuff.  For a long time I was a 5 cappuccino a day kind of guy.  Nowadays I can go for months without it, and generally won't allow myself more than one day a week of coffee consumption.  But when I hear people tout the benefits I must admit that the devil on my shoulder still kicks in and says, "hey, why are you avoiding the stuff?"

Then the other day I had an experience.  This was one of those days that I allowed myself a coffee (OK so I had three...).  I was all jacked up, since coffee actually affects me now that I don't drink much of it.  Then I hit my training.  Things actually went quite well as long as I was doing fairly straightforward stuff.  In fact, I actually felt quite strong (probably from the adrenal stimulation).  But then I got into more sophisticated movements and everything fell apart.  Forget about applying strength through a sophisticated movement pattern while balancing on one leg!!  I fumbled through it, but what I had gained in brute strength I had given up in fine motor coordination.  I had traded capacity for sophistication.  I had given away quality for quantity. 

And that is when the realization hit me.  If you are "working out," coffee may indeed improve your performance.  If you are "training," the performance improvement would depend on what you are trying to train.  But if you are "practicing," you will be shooting yourself in the foot!  What's the difference?  Well, in my books, working out is just pushing weight, putting in mileage, etc for the sole reason of burning calories and building muscles.  You don't need anything more than brute or gross motor patterns to get the job done.  Training involves doing work which will take you towards a specific goal.  So the goal you are training towards and the phase of training you are currently in will determine the degree of sophistication needed in your movement.  Finally, practicing involves the fine tuning of the technical intricacies of the goal you are training for.  This requires perhaps the most complex motor patterns and the most sophistication.  And this is where a stimulant like coffee would appear to have the most detrimental effects.

These are just ramblings from my recent experience based on my own training performance.  And they deal only with the "performance" aspect of using stimulants.  There are also a whole host of health related considerations which should be looked at before "using."  But I'll leave those for you to explore on your own.  I doubt I will ever give up my occasional cappuccino.  I enjoy it too much.  But I am glad that I have some distance now and realize more and more the effect that everything has on my body that I put in my mouth.  Just "food" for thought...