How Does Marijuana Effect Exercise Performance?

Laurel Gibson, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and lead of a new study, says there are currently no human studies “on the effects of legal market cannabis on the experience of exercise,” notes a CU Boulder press release.

This is where her team comes in. The SPACE study (Study on Physical Activity and Cannabis Effects) is currently recruiting paid adult volunteers who are familiar with using cannabis while working out. The volunteers will undergo three different sessions. 

The first session will see researchers measuring heart rate while asking volunteers different questions to lay the foundation of what and who they’re working with. Participants will return sober for a 30-minute treadmill run on the next visit. The volunteers will answer a question every 10 minutes about their perception of time, how strenuous the workout feels, their thoughts, and their pain levels.

Following this visit, volunteers are asked to go to a local dispensary and purchase either a specific CBD-dominant strain or THC-dominant strain. They are then asked to get high before coming in for their third and final session.

Under current federal law, marijuana is still illegal for possession and distribution, including on college campuses. Thus, the participants will use their cannabis at home and be picked up by a researcher in a white Dodge Sprinter van called the ‘cannavan.’ The researcher will safely bring them to the lab.

Gibson hopes that comparing sober sessions to high sessions on the treadmill will help her team make some prominent conclusions in cannabis research. In the CU Boulder press release, Gibson notes that cannabis is often linked to a “decrease in motivation” and the “stereotype of couch-lock and laziness.”

However, Gibson also notes the number of anecdotal reports from athletes using cannabis when golfing, doing yoga, snowboarding, or running. A different CU Boulder study discovered that 80% of cannabis users use the plant while working out. 70% said it increased enjoyment, and 78% said it enhances recovery. Overall, 52% said it was motivating.

Angela Bryan, a professor of psychology and neuroscience and Gibson’s faculty advisor on the SPACE study, touched on a prior study that found how older adults who consumed cannabis got more exercise than those who didn’t. Bryan says that as we get older, working out becomes painful, which is why older adults don’t get as much exercise. 

Bryan suggested in the same CU Boulder press release that cannabis has anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties, meaning that reducing pain and inflammation in older adults working out with help from cannabis “could be a real benefit.”