The effects of a caffeine-like supplement, TeaCrine®, on muscular strength, endurance and power performance in resistance-trained men.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Copper (Supplement), published as a randomized controlled trial.

TeaCrine® is the synthetic version to naturally occurring theacrine (1, 3, 7, 9-tetramethyluric acid) found in the leaves of Camellia kucha tea plants.

A few studies have examined the effects of TeaCrine® on cognitive perception, but no research exists examining its effects on resistance exercise performance.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as young adults and adults, men only.

Twelve resistance-trained men participated in a randomized, double-blind, cross-over designed study.

Visual analogue scales for energy, focus, motivation to exercise, and fatigue were administered at baseline and 90 min post-treatment ingestion (pre-workout).

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover study.

Because people in this Copper (Supplement) study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Copper (Supplement), so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Copper (Supplement) group a baseline to be compared against.

In the crossover set-up each of the participants took both Copper (Supplement) and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

Power and velocity were measured using a TENDO Power Analyzer.

Rating of perceived exertion was assessed after bench press RTF and squat RTF.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Caffeine, Muscle Strength, Muscle, Skeletal, Performance-Enhancing Substances, Physical Endurance, Resistance Training and Uric Acid.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Bench press, Ergogenic, Power, Squat, Supplements and TeaCrine®.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Copper (Supplement).

Its findings take up roughly 6 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2019 (Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Copper (Supplement) compound page, all human trials.