What we actually do for six months
This is a cohort, not a clinical study. We want to make that distinction up front, because the language of sport science can be seductive and we have no interest in pretending we are running a randomised trial. What we are doing is simpler and, in some ways, more honest — thirty practitioners agreeing to log their training and their tea for twenty-six weeks, then meeting once a month to compare what they noticed.
The cohort is led by Amgalan Chin, whose background sits at the cross-border tea trade between Yunnan, Buryatia and Mongolia. Amgalan has spent years working with athletes — endurance riders, wrestlers, distance runners — who use Shēng Pǔ’ěr (生普洱) and Shú Pǔ’ěr (熟普洱) as part of their training routine, and his interest in this cohort is honest pattern-finding. Not prescription. Not optimisation. Just careful observation across thirty people who are willing to write things down.
The structure is straightforward. Each week we focus on one tea. You receive a 25 g portion in the post (Europe-wide shipping, sourced through shop.puerh.app and shop.thetea.app) along with a brewing card written for athletes — water temperature, leaf weight, recommended timing relative to your training block. You drink that tea across the week, before or after sessions according to your own preference, and you log three things: what you trained, what you drank and when, and how you felt during and after. The log is a simple template — we provide it as a printable booklet and as a digital form that syncs with the cohort dashboard.
Once a month, on the first Sunday, the full cohort meets on a video call for ninety minutes. The first thirty minutes are Amgalan walking through the month’s teas — origin, processing, what to actually taste. The remaining hour is the part that matters: members share what they observed. Someone will report that Mí Lán Xiāng (蜜兰香) seemed to settle their stomach before long rides. Someone else will say the opposite. We are not trying to resolve those contradictions — we are trying to see them clearly, because contradictions are where individual response lives, and individual response is what athletes actually train against.
There are three macro-arcs across the six months. Weeks one to nine cover green and lightly oxidised teas — the ones with cleaner caffeine curves, more suitable to morning sessions and pre-training use. Weeks ten to seventeen move into oolongs and aged whites — middle-of-the-spectrum teas that several members will find useful for intra-day hydration and post-strength sessions. Weeks eighteen to twenty-six are the dark and aged teas — Shú Pǔ’ěr, Liù Bǎo (六堡), Fú Zhuān (茯砖) — which tend to find their place in recovery, in evening protocols, in the slower work of digestion and rest. By the end of the arc you have tasted across the full Chinese tea spectrum with twenty-six weeks of your own training overlaid on top of it.
The pedagogy is deliberately quiet. We do not tell you which tea is best for your sport. We do not promise that any particular leaf will lower your resting heart rate or extend your lactate threshold. What we promise is that at the end of twenty-six weeks you will have a personal log — three hundred to four hundred training entries — that lets you see your own patterns. And you will have done it alongside twenty-nine other people whose patterns will not look like yours, which is the most useful corrective against drawing the wrong conclusions from a sample of one.
The cohort builds on protocols developed in collaboration with tea.doctor and the brewing curriculum at tea.school, and members are welcome to bring questions about deeper study into the monthly calls. For those who want to continue past the six months, there is an open community on tea.community where alumni share extended logs and seasonal observations. We will mention the alumni track in the final call. Until then, the work is the same every week — train, drink, write it down, look at it on Sunday.
Week by week
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Week 1 — Lóng Jǐng (龙井). Baseline week — establish the log template and morning pre-training rhythm
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Week 2 — Bì Luó Chūn (碧螺春). Lighter caffeine, shorter window — testing pre-session use under 60 minutes
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Week 3 — Tài Píng Hóu Kuí (太平猴魁). Longer leaf, longer steep — pairing with longer aerobic blocks
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Week 4 — Ān Jí Bái Chá (安吉白茶). High amino acid profile — observation around recovery sleep
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Week 5 — Huáng Shān Máo Fēng (黄山毛峰). First monthly call — pattern review across the green tea arc
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Week 6 — Lù Shān Yún Wù (庐山云雾). Cooler brewing — intra-session cold-steep protocol
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Week 7 — Jūn Shān Yín Zhēn (君山银针). Yellow tea introduction — slower, gentler caffeine release
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Week 8 — Méng Dǐng Huáng Yá (蒙顶黄芽). Post-strength session timing — 60 minutes after lifting
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Week 9 — Bái Háo Yín Zhēn (白毫银针). Closing the lighter arc — white tea baseline, mid-day use
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Week 10 — Bái Mǔ Dān (白牡丹). Second monthly call — review patterns across whites and yellows
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Week 11 — Shòu Méi (寿眉). Aged white — recovery weekends and easier sessions
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Week 12 — Tiě Guān Yīn (铁观音). Oolong entry — pre-training with longer-duration focus blocks
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Week 13 — Mí Lán Xiāng (蜜兰香). Dāncóng aromatic profile — observing digestion before long rides
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Week 14 — Yā Shǐ Xiāng (鸭屎香). Heavier roast Dāncóng — afternoon training sessions
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Week 15 — Dà Hóng Páo (大红袍). Wǔyí rock tea — observing mineral profile and hydration
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Week 16 — Ròu Guì (肉桂). Third monthly call — oolong arc and warmth-during-cold-training notes
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Week 17 — Dōng Fāng Měi Rén (东方美人). Highly oxidised oolong — bridge into the darker spectrum
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Week 18 — Zhèng Shān Xiǎo Zhǒng (正山小种). Black tea introduction — winter morning sessions and warmth
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Week 19 — Jīn Jùn Méi (金骏眉). Refined black — testing tolerance for evening training days
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Week 20 — Qí Mén Hóng Chá (祁门红茶). Qímén — longer steep, longer training day pairing
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Week 21 — Diān Hóng (滇红). Fourth monthly call — Yunnan blacks and the shift toward dark
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Week 22 — Shēng Pǔ’ěr (生普洱). Young raw Pǔ’ěr — pre-endurance use and stomach response
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Week 23 — Shēng Pǔ’ěr aged 10y (生普洱). Aged raw — gentler astringency, post-long-ride observation
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Week 24 — Shú Pǔ’ěr (熟普洱). Ripe Pǔ’ěr — evening recovery and post-session digestion
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Week 25 — Liù Bǎo (六堡). Guǎngxī dark tea — cold-weather recovery and warmth
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Week 26 — Fú Zhuān (茯砖). Closing call — full cohort review, alumni track invitation
What’s included
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Twenty-six weekly portions of Chinese tea (25 g each) shipped across Europe, sourced via shop.puerh.app and shop.thetea.app
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Printed log booklet plus digital log template synced to the cohort dashboard
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Six ninety-minute monthly group calls led by Amgalan Chin (recordings provided)
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Brewing card for each tea — water temperature, leaf weight, suggested training-block timing
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Private cohort channel on tea.community for between-call questions and member observations
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End-of-cohort personal pattern report — your six-month log summarised across training type, tea, and self-rated response
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Optional one-to-one thirty-minute call with Amgalan in month three or six
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Discounted access to follow-on courses at tea.school and protocol consultations via tea.doctor