EXPERIMENTS › PERFORMANCE › CAFFEINE VS BASELINEONE OF 21 COMPARISON PAGES · RENDERED FROM THE CATALOG + EDITORIAL DATASET

Does caffeine actually improve performance?

Caffeine is the most reliable legal performance booster there is — it lowers perceived effort so hard things feel easier. But dose, tolerance, and your sleep all shape whether it helps you train or just wires you. Test your own dose.

1–10 SUBJECTIVE RATINGONE VARIABLENULLS REPORTED

THE COMPARISON — ONE VARIABLE CHANGES

A · CAFFEINEThe days with caffeine. Everything else in your routine stays exactly as it normally is — one variable is what makes the difference readable.

B · BASELINEYour normal days, nothing changed. These are the control your caffeine days are measured against.

Everything else stays as normal — one variable is what makes the difference readable.

WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYSCaffeine consistently improves strength, endurance, and perceived exertion across many studies, typically around 3–6 mg per kg of body weight taken before exercise.Habitual users build tolerance, and late-day caffeine harms sleep (and therefore recovery), so the net effect for you is best measured directly.

EVIDENCEStrong

TYPICAL DOSE3–6 mg/kg pre

CAVEATTolerance / sleep

BEST-MEASUREDReps / effort

THE 14-DAY PROTOCOL — SINGLE VARIABLE, SHUFFLED

CafCaf—CafCafCaf—Caf—Caf————

7 CAFFEINE DAYS · 7 BASELINE — SHUFFLED, COUNTER-BALANCED, SO WEEKENDS AND STRESS LAND ON BOTH SIDES

01Rate one thing. Each morning: your performance, 1–10. Five seconds. Subjective on purpose — it's your outcome, not a wearable's.

02Context rides along. Sleep duration and screen time from Apple Health / Health Connect add context if you connect them. Optional, never required.

03A verdict that admits uncertainty. Likely helped · no clear difference · likely made it worse — with how confident, not just which. Too few clean days? The app says so instead of rounding up.

COMMUNITY RESULTS — NOT YET

NO DATA YET

Once enough members run this comparison and consent to pooling, anonymized outcomes appear here — the helped, the no-clear-difference, and the made-it-worse. Until then this box stays empty. An empty box beats an invented number.

GET YOUR ANSWERRun it on your own days.14 days · 7 caffeine vs 7 baseline · one 5-second rating a day. A verdict at the end — even if it's “no clear difference.”Start this experiment — freeNO CARD FOR THE FREE TIER · 18+ · ONE EXPERIMENT AT A TIME — THE APP ENFORCES IT

MORE COMPARISONSCOMING SOONCOMING SOONCOMING SOON

HONEST FAQ

Coffee or pills?Either delivers caffeine; pills make the dose precise. Elyxis tracks performance, not the source.

Evening workouts?Pre-workout caffeine can wreck sleep — worth tracking alongside training.

Wellness information, not medical advice — nothing here diagnoses or treats anything. No member data appears on this page: none exists yet, and we won't invent it.

All experiments FAQ Terms Privacy