Is It True That Cannabis Helps With Athletic Performance?

A scientific viewpoint of why so many athletes of today boast about smoking cannabis after their training sessions

“It helps me with my physical recovery. I’ve always had this awful muscle soreness after a workout. One day I smoked a joint after I had hit the gym, and voila!, the next morning, for the first time in weeks, my body wasn’t hurting,” would tell me Chris, a lovely Jamaican I met in the USA during my stay there. Back then, I had read a dozen of articles of how smoking cannabis helped athletes with their performance, however, it wasn’t until that day with Chris that I received an actual account of the drug’s effects on one’s muscles.

However, overall muscle recovery and soreness relief are not the only athletic aspect that’s being affected by cannabis use. Improving performance, reducing inflammation, and treating muscle spasms may be the other important implications of marijuana in the field of sports.

It has been widely known that many star athletes have endorsed the drug throughout the years, some of them being Michael Phelps (swimming) and Nick Diaz (MMA).

“If I’m at home and I’m training — doing my same things every day — then I’m definitely going to want to use cannabis. It’s gonna help.” That’s what Nick Diaz said in an interview for High Times after he was suspended for 18 months from MMA for cannabis use.

Phelps was actually also suspended from competition in 2009 after he had been caught smoking cannabis from a pipe.

Interestingly, however, it’s not only high profile athletes that have recognized the beneficial effects cannabis has on their physical recovery. Many other, regular people, that take on exercising a couple of days a week, also see the drug as a remedy for soreness and post-workout relaxation.

But why do so many active people and professional sportsmen use marijuana specifically for their athletic performance and recovery?

CBD and THC

There was something different in the air at the 2021 Olympic Games in Tokyo. One particularly important aspect of last year’s Games that may have been overlooked by the wide public, was the endorsement of CBD-based products by a growing number of athletes. The summer Olympic Games were probably the first big sports venue that consisted of so many sportspersons competing in the many different disciplines, who used cannabinoids for performance and recovery purposes.

This shows that the use of cannabis is slowly increasing even at the highest levels. But it’s not only cannabis, though. CBD, which is one of the main active ingredients in the marijuana plant, is also being used to aid muscle function and joint recovery, without the athlete having to experience the “high” effect that the other active ingredient THC causes.

THC may only be consumed through inhaling a joint’s smoke. THC and CBD are usually both present in a joint. However, the latter one comes in many other different types, such as powder, capsules, cream, oil, transdermal patches, and more. These types of products often come with as low as 3% of CBD content. Apart from performance and recovery, athletes can potentially benefit from CBD in other ways — healthier sleep cycles and improved overall well-being and mental-health.

Scientific Evidence

Although currently the scientific community is not going crazy about the subject, there still are a dozen read-worthwhile papers. One of them, published in 2018, argued that cannabis’ effects may be promising for chronic pain management, although other findings of its efficacy are limited.

“Although the prevalence of cannabis use among elite athletes is not well-known, use is associated with certain high-risk sports. There is no evidence for cannabis use as a performance-enhancing drug.”

Another paper named Cannabis and Athletic Performance from 2021, argues that the effects of cannabis in relation to health, performance, and recovery of athletes “remains incomplete owing to large knowledge gaps and low-quality existing evidence stemming from substantial barriers to conducting high quality cannabis research.”

Currently, unlike CBD, marijuana and its active ingredient THC are prohibited by in-competition by the World Anti-Doping Code. Consequently, one of the highlights at the last Olympics was the ban of the USA top athlete Sha’Carri Richardson, who had tested positive for cannabis. Although THC, and cannabis in overall, is seeing increasing acceptance from governments around the world, it seems unlikely that the drug would be legalized for use during major sports events.

CBD, on the other hand, seems to have a brighter future for now. According to Cannabis and Athletic Performance study, CBD “ may have some promise for improving athlete pain and recovery through a number of potential mechanisms,” its use by athletes is more likely to be relevant to recovery during and after training and while competing.

Another, systematic review published in 2020 and consisting of 37 studies, showed that approximately 1 in 4 athletes has reported using cannabis within the past one year (approximately 46,000 individuals took participation across the studies).

“Two studies found a negative impact on performance, while another 2 studies found no impact. There was no literature on the influence of cannabis on athletic recovery. Based on the available evidence, cannabis does not appear to positively affect performance, but the literature surrounding this is generally poor.”

On the other hand, however, a longer paper published by researchers in the University in Sydney, argued that CBD has been reported to help with different physiological, biochemical, and psychological effects, which could potentially help athletes with their performance and recovery. There’s evidence for “anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective, analgesic, and anxiolytic actions of CBD and the possibility it may protect against GI damage associated with inflammation and promote the healing of traumatic skeletal injuries.”

Conclusion

Apart from these papers mentioned above, I found a dozen more that concluded similar findings — there is not enough evidence to support the claims that cannabis (also including the separate intake of CBD) has a profound effect of recovery and performance on athletes that use it regularly. It’s really important to recognize that all of the findings across most the scientific reviews are still very preliminary and often inconsistent.

The overall conclusion would be that the studies on the effects of cannabis (including CBD and THC) on athletic performance and recovery are lacking and that further, more comprehensive, research is needed.

Thank you for taking some time to read my article! If you wish to read more written by me, check my Medium page:

If you are further interested in psychedelics and mental health, I recently wrote about whether smoking can damage your brain cells, and the harmful and beneficial effects cannabis has on your body.