Tea Drinking and Exercise

I primarily (97.4%) drink actual tea (Camellia sinensis), and thus can only speak on how caffeine, l-theanine, etc interact with my exercise.

Currently I drink tea while practicing yoga and taijiquan. I have it beforehand (as I have it every morning anyhow), and will bring a large sized mason jar of tea with me to practice as my “water bottle”. Sometimes it is just the leftovers of the morning session with new water, sometimes I start it anew. The yoga is flow based and heated, and I sweat a ton. The tea seems perfectly adequate at keeping me hydrated.

I don’t notice any huge benefits, besides perhaps slightly longer endurance and the common heightened mental state that tea always gives.

There’s not a ton of research on caffeine and exercise, but one of the major studies finds:

“There is no evidence that caffeine ingestion before exercise leads to dehydration, ion imbalance, or any other adverse effects.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11583104

As for Rooibos, and other tisanes, I imagine there’s no controversy, and would be fantastic to use while exercising.

I regularly drink tea during workouts, either lifting or boxing. I like the extra caffeine just before and during a workout to help sustain my energy. It may not make a huge difference there, but I also enjoy the taste, which is reason enough for me. More often than not I’ll cold brew black tea or oolong, water it down a bit and take that.

Another benefit is that all water coolers in Chinese gyms are equipped with a hot water tap, so if you have leaves in there and a thermos, you can always brew them out again after your workout.

I don’t exercise as much as I should, but if I did I would likely go for an ice barley tea. A local Asian market sells cheap bagged barley tea that I enjoy as a cold brew. I swear it is twice as refreshing as water.

I usually drink tea before exercise. I’ll rarely drink it in between or during exercise though. I don’t really have a problem with it because tea is mostly water. The caffeine content isn’t enough to alter your physiologic response to exercise unless you’re drinking tons of it.

It may make you have to pee more though :)

I like the extra boost from the caffeine before exercising, drink water during, and more tea after. Mainly due to my hot tea preference. I find that even hot can be very refreshing in the summer.

I drink tea on exercising days as I do on non-exercising days (I’m a ‘tea every day’ sort of person), but I drink water while I’m working out. Less mess to deal with while cleaning the bottle, but mainly water is simply enough.

Thank you for all the feedback and tips.

I like the point made by 9 Thousand Things about the naturally occurring I-theanine that can act as a sedative when performing more wellness exercises like Tai Chi. On that front, I do like to drink a green tea before a period of meditation to relax the body and raise alertness.

Good point aswell Jeffrey Douglas about tea being mainly water so it is going to be hydrating anyway. At least it will be a bit more nutritious.

I don’t drink tea while I am working out but I notice on the days I work out the hardest I lean towards tea with some caffeine in it. I don’t care much for black tea so it’s usually a green tea, often with ginseng in it for little extra zing. Like KiwiDelight I am a drink tea every day sort of person as well. And since I work out first thing in the morning there’s no drink tea before hand so I have not noticed an effect from that.

I used to do tea before martial arts and weight lifting on a regular basis for the caffeine and l-theanine. The smooth energy boost really helped on days where I just wasn’t feeling like a workout. I did BCAAs during and after though.

I drink tea every day, workout or no workout, but never during workouts and I like to fuel up after, so it’s usually a pre-workout thing on workout days. I sweat a ton when doing deadlifts/squats/bench so I go through several quarts of water during a workout.

Tea is supposed to be good for recovery, however, and chin shin oolong is supposed to boost testosterone levels, too. I believe it is black tea that boosts recovery, but I drink what I feel like on any given day.