The effect of aerobic exercise and caffeine supplementation on the cognitive performance and balance of college student-athletes recovered from COVID-19

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is viewed as one of the defining crises of the current era, with various adverse ramifications for sports performance. The objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of aerobic exercise and caffeine supplementation on the cognitive performance and balance of college student-athletes recovered from COVID-19. Forty male student-athletes aged between 18 to 25 years from the Imam Khomeini International University of Qazvin were randomly assigned to four groups: 1. exercise + caffeine supplementation, 2. aerobic exercise + placebo, 3. aerobic exercise, and 4. control, in a pre-test post-test design. The Shapiro-Wilk test was used to check the normality of data distribution and covariance analysis was used for inter-group comparison. The ANCOVA analysis showed significant differences in cognitive performance and balance among the four groups (P<0.05). Pairwise comparisons using the Bonferroni post-hoc test showed statistically significant differences in cognitive performance and balance between the aerobic exercise + caffeine group versus the aerobic exercise + placebo group (P<0.05) and the aerobic exercise versus the control group (P<0.05). Also, there was significant differences in mean cognitive performance and balance indices between AE+CAF versus CONT (P<0.005) and AE+CAF versus AE (P<0.005). The results of this study show that aerobic exercise with caffeine supplementation can improve cognitive performance and balance of student-athletes recovered from COVID-19.