Energy Drinks Do Not Improve Le Parkour Performance: A Randomized Controlled Study

Diana Madureira,Jeferson Oliveira Santana,Bruno Rodrigues,Cesar Augustus De Sousa Zocoler,Bruno Avelar,Érico Chagas Caperuto

doi:10.4236/fns.2016.74035

Abstract

Le Parkour is a sport where the athletes transpose common day-to-day obstacles in the best possible way. This sport demands elements like strength, focus and decision making; elements supposedly affected by energy drinks, with performance improvement. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of energy drink ingestion on Le Parkour athlete’s performance. Twelve male amateur athletes, mean age of 23.5 ± 2.74, took part in this randomized, double-blind, placebocontrolled study. Subjects were randomly assigned to drink: 250 ml of energy drink, 500 ml of energy drink or placebo. Forty minutes after the beverage consumption, they were evaluated in a specific circuit performance test (time to complete the circuit) followed by a perceived exertion and a circuit technical difficulty evaluation. We also evaluated heart rate in 3 different moments: rest, pre-circuit and post-circuit. All variables were collected in 3 different experimental days. Time, perceived exertion and technical difficulty were higher in the first day compared to the others. Heart rate did not show a difference when we compared the days. Drinking one or two cans of an energy drink did not improve performance of Le Parkour athletes in a sport specific test. It also did not change heart rate or perceived exertion.

Highlights

Created in the 80’s by David Belle, Le Parkour is known as the art of moving, because its objective is to transpose
There are studies as the one published by Ivy et al [17] that did not found any difference on heart rate after energy drink consumption
As one can of the energy drink used in our study had 1.12 mg/kg of caffeine, and two cans had 2.24 ± 0.24 mg/kg, the absence of difference when we compared REST to PRECIRCUIT might be due to the low caffeine concentration provided

Summary

Introduction

Created in the 80’s by David Belle, Le Parkour is known as the art of moving, because its objective is to transposeHow to cite this paper: Madureira, D., Santana, J.O., Avelar, B., de Sousa Zocoler, C.A., Rodrigues, B. and Caperuto, É.C. (2016) Energy Drinks Do Not Improve Le Parkour Performance: A Randomized Controlled Study. Nowadays, it is growing in popularity and number of practitioners [2] and, as in every modality, there is a demand for performance improvement. Energy drinks supposedly promote improvements in alertness, focus, time to reaction, fatigue delay, and well being to its consumers [3]-[5]. These effects are extremely compatible to those required by Le Parkour practice which would make this a great association.

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Methods

Conclusion