A new survey released in Frontiers in Public Health suggests that using marijuana as a workout boost is not such a hollow idea as previously thought. The well-timed hit can reverse the monotony of a hard workout so effectively that it has taken a place in some communities which practice endurance sports.
The study, conducted by the University of Colorado’s Angela Bryan, Ph.D., found that 81.7% of 605 survey testees in states where weed was legal reported using marijuana before or after doing exercises. Bryan, a professor of psychology and neuroscience said that the researchers were incredibly surprised that the numbers were so high.
Her study helps in uniting the understandings of weed-related workouts, more specifically why athletes resort to weed when they’re considering a workout. Her results show that people don’t smoke because they think it makes them better at their sport, but they believe that it makes the workout more enjoyable and aids in recovery in the aftermath.
Avery Collins, an endurance runner and a top finisher at one of America’s most difficult ultras said he either ‘smokes a little’ or takes an edible approximately 30 minutes before he begins his training. Although Bryan’s study cannot say whether cannabis affects athletic performance, it does show that most sportspeople use it because it makes their training feel better.
Marijuana is beneficial for sport training
The majority of the people believed that weed affected their enjoyment of the training and their recovery in a strong manner. This conclusion was drawn after analyzing the answers the participants gave to a series of statements about incorporating marijuana in their exercises on a scale of 1 to 7, with the latest number signifying that they ‘strongly agreed’. When asked if they felt that week upgraded their enjoyment and recovery, testees gave mediocre ratings of 5.3 and 5.7, which indicates that they usually agreed that it enhances each workout.
When talking about recovery, there is plenty of research leading to the use of cannabis products for muscles. As a matter of fact, even the World Anti-doping Agency actually allows cannabidiol (CBD) to be used during competitions.
The most important discovery of the research is that increased enjoyment leads to more workout, and in general, people who mixed marijuana and exercise worked out an average of 159.7 minutes per week, which is a lot more than the 103.5 minutes per week attributed to those who didn’t mix the two. Also, the co-users tend to go harder in their exercise, having 30.2 more minutes of anaerobic exercise, the type that is so hard that it makes lactic acid to accumulate in the muscles and causes pain the next day.
Though, in a society where people try hard to meet even the minimum exercise instructions, this early study implies marijuana may be just what it takes to get some people exercising and even helping them enjoy the process.
Tiesha loves to share her passion for everything that’s beautiful in this world. Apart from writing on her beauty blog and running her own beauty channel on Youtube, she also enjoys traveling and photography. Tiesha covers various stories on the website.