Personally, I'm not a big fan of caffeine, as one cup of coffee at noon keeps me up at night. Which makes it that much more baffling how for a few years there I downed multiple liters (literally) of diet Coke a day (i.e. was addicted). The only caffeine I get now is in occasional chocolate bars or the little bits left in decaf, which I think is good (still enough caffeine to keep me up at night).
But regardless of how much caffeine you can tolerate, caffeine following exercise is a bad idea. In a nutshell, caffeine inhibits the building of muscle, which is exactly what you don't want during the 30-90 minute post-workout (PWO) "anabolic window", a special time for building muscle.
According to Ori Hofmekler, author of the popular Warrior Diet and an upcoming book "Unlocking Your Muscle Gene", caffeine inhibits mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin), the muscle-building mechanism. This is OK, he argues, before excercise, because you don't build muscle while you exercise but rather aftward. It works against recovery, however, post-workout.
Hofmekler cites three thing that "spring-load" mTOR so that it can come back with a vengeance when the time comes to build muscle: fasting, exercise, and caffeine. When the spring is released, it builds muscle (assuming there are enough amino acids available from protein). Drinking coffee after exercise prevents the spring from being released.
"Fasting, exercise and coffee inhibit mTOR in a way that can be compared to a spring being compressed in a closed box."
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/04/16/ori-hofmekler-on-coffee.aspx
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