Caffeine and Energy Drinks: Distinguishing Acute Performance from Motor Learning with a Hypothesis-Generating Application to Men’s Artistic Gymnastics: Critical Narrative Review

Abstract

Caffeine and commercial energy drinks are widely used to modify alertness and athletic performance, but acute performance enhancement should not be conflated with motor learning. This critical narrative review distinguishes evidence from isolated caffeine administration, evidence from commercial or multi-ingredient energy drinks, and hypothesis-generating extrapolations to men’s artistic gymnastics (MAG). Acute performance is an immediately observable state influenced by arousal, fatigue, motivation, perceived effort, and other transient factors, whereas motor learning implies a relatively persistent change in capability inferred from delayed retention and/or transfer tests after temporary facilitatory effects have dissipated. Isolated caffeine has the strongest evidence base: position stands and meta-analytic syntheses indicate acute benefits for selected endurance, muscular endurance, strength, power, vigilance, and reaction-time outcomes, although effect magnitude and direction vary across tasks, doses, protocols, and individuals. Commercial caffeine-containing energy drinks have also produced small-to-moderate acute benefits in several performance domains, but product heterogeneity prevents direct equivalence with isolated caffeine. Evidence for long-term motor learning is much weaker. In a double-blind study of 26 low-caffeine consumers, 200 mg caffeine administered immediately after visuomotor practice did not improve 24-h retention, retention magnitude did not differ between caffeine and placebo groups (t(24) = -0.081, p = 0.936. Expectancy may independently modify perceived effort, confidence, attention, and performance, but marketing-to-performance pathways remain hypothetical. The targeted MAG-specific search identified no direct experimental study in elite MAG; therefore, apparatus-level propositions in this review are explicitly hypothesis-generating rather than demonstrated effects or recommendations. The available evidence is insufficient to determine whether isolated caffeine or commercial energy drinks improve long-term motor-memory retention or transfer.