“Coffee?” It’s the word every cyclist loves to hear. There’s something about the ritual of sipping a steaming cup of the chocolate-coloured elixir that feels right. Whether you have it black, with a sugar or two, as a flat white or with a dash of chocolate, coffee is a cornerstone of cycling culture. I mean, we plan entire rides around the café – it’s where we refuel, warm up, and catch up with friends.
But we don’t just drink it during. We have a quick coffee before we leave the door, relying on it to make our legs go that little bit faster. We have one during in order to keep fatigue at bay or to revive us after the dreaded bonk. And we most likely have one when we get home to relax and relive the day’s efforts in the saddle. It certainly has a special place in a cyclist's heart.
Caffeine is why we love it so much. It’s a compound that has been shown across many studies for many years to boost performance, with current guidelines by the International Society of Sports Nutrition stating that ingesting three to six mg of caffeine per kg of body weight approximately 60 minutes before exercise will see positive effects on your performance, whether you are highly trained or not. It can have such a positive effect that between 1984 and 2004, the World Anti-Doping Agency banned high concentrations of caffeine from all Olympic events – even with the ban lifted athletes have to be wary of their caffeine intake ahead of events.
But what if coffee – a drink that the UK drinks approximately 95 million cups of a day, according to Lavazza – provided a performance boost beyond just caffeine? This is what Alex Higham, founder of Exhale, champions with his organic coffee, which is roasted in the UK.
As a former cyclist, triathlete and surfer himself, Higham understood the power of caffeine on performance after discovering the hot beverage when becoming a dad. But when Higham started suffering from various health issues, he wondered if coffee could offer more. And as it turns out, it can.
“Coffee starts its life as a fruit growing on a tree,” Higham told Rouleur. “Most people don’t realise that coffee beans are a seed that grows inside a fruit on a tree. People just tend to think of it as this brown, lifeless caffeinated water and nothing else, but coffee actually comes from a fruit. Like all fruit, coffee can have a lot of other health compounds as well. However, people don’t treat it like that and don’t process it in a way that retains those healthy compounds. But coffee in its natural state starts with lots of vitamins and polyphenols, which have antioxidants, anti-inflammatory, and other great effects on the body.”
Higham explained that it is how it is roasted and then brewed that can make coffee lose its high levels of antioxidants and polyphenols – up to 90%. “If you go too dark [with the roasting process], it will lose all the benefits,” he added, explaining that is why at Exhale, he produces only a dark(ish) roast coffee to retain as many healthy compounds as he can, boasting the same antioxidants as 600 blueberries, 55 oranges or 1.2kg of kale.
What are polyphenols?
“Caffeine is one of the best and most scientifically backed performance enhancers on the planet,” Higham said. “So, everyone knows the benefits. Polyphenols have also been found to improve sprint and endurance performance, so with a high polyphenol coffee, you get a combination from both.”
Polyphenols are a class of micronutrients found in plants associated with many health benefits. There are more than 8,000 different types of polyphenols that can be found in fruits, whole grains, vegetables, herbs and spices, and coffee. According to the Zoe website, “polyphenols boast a wide range of health benefits, thanks to their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.”
Higham explained that people are aware of the polyphenols in fruits and vegetables. However, there has been a new wave of understanding in recent years about polyphenols in coffee, with it being the richest source of polyphenols in our diets. (Although he does advise that an individual's polyphenol intake should come from a variety of sources and not just coffee…)
It is estimated that the average daily intake of polyphenols for adults is between 500mg and 900mg, but in order to achieve polyphenols full benefits, such as lower inflammation, an individual needs to consume around 1,000 to 2,000mg a day. Higham found that coffee’s main polyphenols are chlorogenic acids (CGA), and in its unroasted state, CGA’s can make up seven to eight per cent of coffee’s total weight. However, a 2014 study by The National Library of Medicine found the level of polyphenols found in one cup of coffee varied depending on the brand, with as little as six milligrams in a Starbucks coffee.
“Polyphenols are also anxiolytic, meaning they reduce anxiousness, and in studies, they have been shown to counteract some of the negative effects of caffeine. So, if you are having a lot of caffeine in a race, high levels of polyphenols should counteract the negatives you might get from caffeine. For example, crashes or jitters. But if that is complimented by a high level of polyphenols, then hopefully, you won’t experience those effects,” he said.
These benefits from polyphenols were supported by Dr Rupy Aujla, otherwise known as The Doctor’s Kitchen, who said: “The chlorogenic acid and some of the other polyphenols that you find in coffee are naturally anti-inflammatory, so it stands to reason that they can improve your post-exercise recovery.”
How it can impact recovery
Polyphenols are anti-inflammatory and, therefore, can help the recovery process post-exercise, where the muscles are inflamed. Higham continued: “The same with antioxidants, so when you exercise, especially high intensity or long endurance, you get a lot of oxidation stress created in the body, and antioxidants are really good for helping you calm the fires of oxidation in the body.”
He continued to explain that people would still experience the same benefits from the polyphenols in coffee even if it was decaffeinated, even going on to say that he recommends athletes have a cup or two of decaf coffee post-exercise to help with the recovery process. This only applies, however, if the coffee you are using is high in polyphenols.
But could high polyphenol levels that are helping recovery blunt the body's natural adaptive response? “We’ve seen a lot of studies where they use high doses of supplements like vitamin C in isolation,” Aujla explained. “So when you have muscle sheering as a result of resistance training or endurance training, the adaptive response of the muscle signals being broken and then being essentially told by the body to rebuild and rebuild them strong is blunted if you have too much of an anti-inflammatory signal from something like a high dose of vitamin C, but you don’t really see that with coffee. I mean, unless you are taking mega doses of coffee or you’re taking high-dose supplementation of individual polyphenols in coffee, like chlorogenic acid or quercetin, you don’t really see that.
“I don’t think there is evidence to suggest that coffee after exercise would have a damaging effect. If anything, it would help with the natural process of rebuilding because you’re actually giving it some anti-inflammatory benefits. But you’re not so much that you’re blunting that adaptive process. One thing I would say about coffee after exercise is to make sure you’re hydrating properly.”
He continued to highlight that you can build tolerance to caffeine and as a result, not feel the same benefits as you did before. He recommends “going up and down every now and then” to decaff in order to feel the performance boost from the caffeine while still gaining those health and recovery benefits from the polyphenols. He added: “I personally do a 30-day decaf coffee switch every year, and that first coffee, I can literally feel the benefits – I can’t have more than a coffee or two because I feel the benefits so much, I feel amazing.”
What’s the optimal race-day strategy?
Higham works with several athletes through Exhale and tells them to have a cup of coffee one hour to 90 minutes before an event so your body has enough time to metabolise the caffeine, a caffeine supplement top-up right before, and then a cup or two of decaff post-race.
“People don’t realise what the minimum effective dose is for caffeine, and it is actually pretty high,” Higham stated as to why he recommends his athletes take a caffeine supplement before a race. “So, the International Society of Sports Nutrition recommends three to six milligrams of caffeine per kilo of bodyweight to get the performance benefits – there are studies which say that it is really the higher end as well to get the performance benefits. So if you are going to the upper end, that is like 600 milligrams of caffeine, and one cup of our coffee has 200 milligrams of caffeine, and that is quite strong. People don’t realise that you actually need quite a lot [of caffeine] to get the performance benefits – coffee on its own isn’t strong enough.”
This is why caffeinated coffee is also the best pre-workout or pre-event fuel if you are after those positive performance effects, as other alternatives such as tea or matcha have a lot less caffeine - for 100g of tea, there’s only 11mg of caffeine, and for matcha, there’s only between 19-44mg of caffeine per gram. “Coffee is the only thing that you can consume that has a tangible amount of caffeine in it,” Higham added.
If you are racing later in the day, however, Higham warns athletes to be wary of their caffeine intake as this can have a negative effect on sleep and your circadian rhythm. “Just be careful with timings,” he warned. “There was a study recently [published by the European Heart Journal in January 2025] that linked morning coffee drinking to the reduction in risk of cardiovascular disease, and if you drink coffee in the afternoon, it negates the reduction in risk.”
So, if you were looking for an excuse to put the kettle on or take a walk to the local coffee shop, then here it is – just make sure it is before 12pm, and you check the polyphenols levels.
