Summer bod or summer bong? Now you don’t have to choose! With summer just around the corner, now is the time to get your butt in shape and your body ready for those beach days in bathing suits. Some people think you have to choose between the bong or your body but that’s no longer the case. After all, a happy stoner is a healthy stoner, given a little exercise of course!
As the benefits of cannabis continue to astound medical and scientific communities around the world, they have further found that smoking or vaping the right strain of weed can actually help your fitness and health on many levels. Let’s take a look at just 6 ways that marijuana can improve your workout so that you know exactly how to boost and support your performance while getting that beach bod you know you want.
The pain relief, euphoria, and escape from anxiety which many feel after a long session of aerobic exercise have been found to be connected to the brain’s endocannabinoid system. The reason that a “high” is only felt after an extensive period of exercise is that these opioid peptide endorphins cannot pass through the blood-brain barrier. By smoking or ingesting low doses of marijuana before a workout, you’ll quicken the time it takes to reach a runner’s high due to fortifying anandamide levels within the body.
Anxiety impacts everything from our ability to our focus on the performance. While anxiety-based performance programs do exist, there has been a shift towards recognizing how draining stress and anxiety actually are. Cardiorespiratory rate, fear response patterns, and anxiety which starts building from a pre-competition level can cripple your workout. As self-confidence fades, cognitive stacks cumulatively which makes it hard to escape the rut. Low doses of cannabis provide anxiety relief which alleviates much of the hidden stress holding you back from reaching your peak performance.
The benefits of cannabis as a pain mitigating treatment are widespread. Almost 50% of all cannabis users report considerably less pain. High-intensity interval training supplies an athlete with massive gains but the toll that it can take on your body can cause quite a lot of pain. Cannabis enables you to reap the full cardiovascular and healthy blood glucose benefits of HIIT while minimizing the pain perceived after an intense workout. Useful for both ends of the spectrum!
Short-term use of cannabis has proven to be extremely valuable to our quality of sleep. THC has alleviated the dissatisfaction of sleep quantity and quality experienced by insomnia sufferers. These benefits extend to recovery, as the body releases the largest amount of growth hormone during REM sleep. Our REM sleep cycle is largely blocked by hidden anxiety and cannabis can help us sleep deeper for longer, giving our body the optimal time to release growth hormone. The only other time the body releases a significant amount is directly after an intense workout.
THC interacts with the temperature effects of the body causing hypothermic action which resembles that of diazepam. Your body’s natural reaction to small dosages of THC helps you maintain a lower core heat for longer. Whether you’re doing the whole circuit or pushing a HIIT cycle hard, the cooling effect on your body is invaluable to gains and recovery.
Certain strains of marijuana, particularly good varieties of sativa, are excellent for boosting focus and motivation. Uplifting strains with give you the drive that you need to get your workout going. Many people resort to arming themselves with a range of supplements. Yet all that top athletes, mass builders, and lifters have proven to need is a range of good anabolic steroids and a way to grow marijuana naturally. The cannabinoids and THC present in marijuana help your body maintain energy levels needed to get through those tough workouts.
Go get that high and that summer bod! The beach and the bong are waiting, could you ask for a better duo? We sure couldn’t!
SEARCH 
CART (