The Surprising Benefits of Cannabis for Fitness Enthusiasts, Part 2

[00:00:00] Ellen Scanlon: This podcast discusses cannabis and is intended for audiences 21 and over.

[00:00:12] Ellen Scanlon: Are you trying to drink less alcohol this summer? Cans, delicious cannabis beverages come in lots of flavors and THC levels that range from one milligram to 10 milligrams. So you can choose how you want to feel. Use promo code DoThePot for 20 percent off when you visit drinkcan. com. That’s drink C A N N.

[00:00:35] Ellen Scanlon: Try a can today and have a great time without a hangover.

[00:00:47] Christine Apple: Sometimes you’re going for a run. The hard time is around 15 minutes once you’ve started going, where if you can push through 15 minutes, you’re there and you get into the zone and you can just go forever. Then it starts to feel really good. I usually take it about 20 or 30 minutes before I go for a run.

[00:01:03] Christine Apple: That transition into the meditative state where it just seems smoother and easier. Yeah. And it’s, it’s just really nice. I find myself. Getting lost, not even really paying attention to where I’m going. It becomes almost an outer body experience. And it’s really lovely. And I can come back from a run and be like, Oh, I know what to do.

[00:01:20] Christine Apple: I’ve got the idea, you know? And so it just kind of shakes things out. It helps me focus.

[00:01:28] Ellen Scanlon: Welcome to How to Do the Pot, a podcast helping you feel confident about cannabis. I’m your host, Ellen Scanlon.

[00:01:41] Ellen Scanlon: You just heard from Christine Appel, the Oregon based founder of the edible brand Grown. This is part two in our new series celebrating the Paris Olympics and focusing on the surprising connections between cannabis and fitness. In the first episode of the series, we dug into the New York Times article, Can Weed Improve a Workout, with its writer, the journalist Hilary Ockhauer.

[00:02:08] Ellen Scanlon: She shared how cannabis is helping to lower anxiety, relieve chronic pain, and bring more joy to movement. Check that out if you haven’t listened yet. In today’s show, we’ll explain why cannabis is banned from Olympic and international competition, despite not being performance enhancing, and why professional athletes are still navigating tricky territory when it comes to cannabis.

[00:02:35] Ellen Scanlon: If you don’t have a sports governing body deciding whether you can try it, we have some great tips from people all across the country about why they love weed for workout motivation, for enhancing the runner’s high feeling and for rest and recovery. Please remember that cannabis impacts everyone differently and you may have to experiment a bit to find what works best for you.

[00:03:02] Ellen Scanlon: I want you to have a great workout experience, so start slowly and with low amounts of THC, the intoxicating part of the plan.

[00:03:21] Ellen Scanlon: Before we get into this week’s episode, I want to talk for a second about how to do the POTS newsletter. The newsletter is a twice a month resource that will help you feel confident about cannabis for health, wellbeing, and for fun. The newsletter is also our direct line to you. You can hit the reply button and let me know what topics or guests you’d like to hear on the show.

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[00:04:09] Ellen Scanlon: over the past few years, professional athletes. Especially retired professional athletes have been talking publicly about the benefits of cannabis instead of opioids for pain relief and athletic recovery. The U. S. professional leagues for basketball, baseball, hockey, and most recently the NCAA, which regulates college athletics, have all removed cannabis from their banned substances lists.

[00:04:37] Ellen Scanlon: Just a few weeks ago, the chair of the NCAA’s Division I Council said that their drug testing program focuses on, and this is a quote, the integrity of competition and cannabis products do not provide a competitive advantage. Hawaii based Anna Simons is the executive director for the Etheridge Foundation, which was founded by musician Melissa Etheridge.

[00:05:04] Ellen Scanlon: The foundation supports scientific research into plant medicine and psychedelic treatments for opioid use disorder. For many years, Anna was an elite rugby player, a sport known for its toughness and its lack of protective gear. We’ll hear from her next week about how she discovered the benefits of cannabis for rugby related injuries.

[00:05:28] Ellen Scanlon: Anna explains why international governing agencies, like the World Anti Doping Agency, which regulates more than 650 international sports federations and the Olympics, continue to prohibit cannabis.

[00:05:44] Anna Symonds: It all goes back to WADA, the World Anti Doping Agency. They have their banned list of substances that are banned in competition and out of competition.

[00:05:54] Anna Symonds: Each country has their own national agency that takes their standards from WADA. So we have U. S. Anti Doping Agency. The issue is WADA says that it is scientifically based, but the problem is that it’s not. They have four criteria for Whether a substance is banned in or out of competition. Um, some things are banned in both and some are, are just in competition.

[00:06:19] Anna Symonds: So the criteria are, you know, is it performance enhancing? Because that’s an issue of fairness. Does it harm human health? There’s this nebulous one called the spirit of sport. Does it violate the spirit of sport? So that’s very ill defined and obviously that’s not scientific and that’s what’s been used to put cannabis on the, the banned list in competition.

[00:06:41] Anna Symonds: It’s not banned out of competition. But the problem is, as we know, cannabinoids like THC stay in the body for weeks after. Consumption, and it depends on the person and your metabolism. And if you are using cannabis therapeutically or medicinally, then you’re having to stop using your medicine, which is like why, you know, alcohol is not on either of those lists.

[00:07:04] Anna Symonds: It doesn’t show up at all. But we know it’s scientifically, it’s more harmful than anything in cannabis. And the performance enhancing piece has been pretty well. established that cannabis isn’t performance enhancing in the way that would be regarded as unfair or cheating. With cannabis, we know that it supports rest and recovery, which is like, a lot of things do that.

[00:07:30] Anna Symonds: You know, magnesium, I mean, things that are just innocuous. WADA never tried to make the agreement that cannabis was performance enhancing. They knew that scientifically it wouldn’t have any legs, so what they have relied on is saying, well, it’s illegal, so that goes against the spirit of sport, and it harms human health, because smoking, it hurts the lungs.

[00:07:51] Anna Symonds: So now that we have all these consumption methods that aren’t smoking, that argument has really fallen by the wayside, as well as the illegality. Has fallen in a number of countries and states, and so they’re just hanging on to it at a stigma at this point.

[00:08:07] Ellen Scanlon: Journalist Hilary Ockhauer knew that the major sports leagues didn’t think cannabis was performance enhancing.

[00:08:14] Ellen Scanlon: What interested her was why are non professional athletes trying it?

[00:08:19] Hilary Achauer: There’s a lot of evidence that it’s not performance enhancing. One of the things that Colorado study illuminated is that THC increases your heart rate. So it was interesting that the runners, they felt better, but they ran slower. So like they were enjoying it, but they ran slower.

[00:08:35] Hilary Achauer: So for these elite athletes, I don’t think it shouldn’t be banned because it’s not helping. So if you want to make your performance worse, you can. So why amateur athletes would be using it is because people either find exercise boring or stressful.

[00:08:58] Ellen Scanlon: Now we’re getting into the how to portion of the show. If you’re ready to add weed to your workout for running, yoga, boxing, hiking, or my favorite swimming, we’ve got you covered with tips from people all across the country who are having more fun with personal fitness. Danielle Simone Brand is a California based writer and the author of Weed Mom, the Can a Curious Woman’s Guide to Healthier Relaxation, Happier Parenting, and Chilling TF Out.

[00:09:31] Ellen Scanlon: Danielle had a yoga practice for many years before she thought to add weed.

[00:09:36] Danielle Simone Brand: No matter what else is going on in life, a yoga mat has long been a place for me to come back to myself. I rolled out the mat, my heart beating fast. I sat in the middle of it, closed my eyes, put the vape pen to my lips, and inhaled.

[00:09:52] Danielle Simone Brand: At first all I wanted to do was sit there. Stoner, my mind shouted, you’re wasting a perfectly good evening to yourself. But those thoughts quieted in time, and I found myself pleasantly altered. Sitting segwayed into a flow of spinal undulations, I languorously moved my spine in the six directions Forward bends, back bends, left and right side bends, twists, alternating between organic movements and longer holds seemed like the way to meet my body exactly where it was in the moment.

[00:10:24] Danielle Simone Brand: Vocalizations and sighs escaped my lips, though normally I would have felt too inhibited to allow that particular kind of release. I was alone, and it felt good. More than good. It felt great. Next, I lay down on my mat and was enraptured by a movement that hardly resembled the more classic postures I usually practiced.

[00:10:44] Danielle Simone Brand: My lower body felt alive and glowing, and I didn’t want to get up for a long while. When I finally stood, I practiced sun salutations, lunges, warrior poses, and squats. Finding the same satisfying ease between movement and long holds. Even as my legs began to shake in horse pose, I didn’t stop immediately, as I might otherwise have done.

[00:11:05] Danielle Simone Brand: Instead, I rode out what felt like a powerful movement of energy. I was a goddess, purely and simply on my mat, thinking, Why the hell haven’t I done this before?

[00:11:16] Ellen Scanlon: Dominique White is the Director of People and Operations at the Illinois Dispensary Ivy Hall. She was a ballet dancer, and CBD really helps with her pain from old injuries.

[00:11:28] Ellen Scanlon: Dominique shares how a mix of edibles and a vape pen give her the support she wants before a workout.

[00:11:36] Dominique White: So I think a lot of people are intimidated, especially with it being inhaling, thinking maybe this can make me tired or take my breath away. But there are certain different aspects of cannabis that really can show recovery and improvement while using during working out.

[00:11:50] Dominique White: Um, CBD has been proven to be one of the most, important parts of cannabis, especially for athletes. People are starting to see all the different features and benefits of how CBD can help fight against inflammation. Really, really great for pain. It helps recovering with muscles while you’re working out and breaking those muscles down.

[00:12:10] Dominique White: And it really can just make a huge difference. There’s CBD that people use as pre workout so they can really get that energy to be able to go full throttle while they’re in the gym. But you know, cannabis has been for so long. Associated with this negative stigma, and it’s really now just about people just giving it a try and really changing their mindset.

[00:12:29] Dominique White: CBD is fantastic. And me personally, I did a lot of like high school sports. I was a dancer. I was in ballet. So, you know, doing point and things. And, you know, my toes never recovered. So for me, CBD is amazing. It really helps with that joint pain and inflammation. And also there are so many different CBD creams that you can use and topicals that truly, truly make a difference.

[00:12:51] Dominique White: And these are things that don’t have psychoactive effects. So you don’t have to worry about, wow, do I feel too loopy or too high to be at the gym working out? Like, no, these are things that are designed for that ailment specifically. So it’s going to help you not only with What you’re looking for it to support you for, whether it’s from a pain or inflammation standpoint, but it’s definitely going to keep that energy level high.

[00:13:13] Dominique White: So you can get through your workout and still for really great after. I usually will vape before I go to the gym. So I’ll use a CBD vape or a vape that has a mixture of CBD and THC. So that’s kind of my go to from when I’m working out. I try to stay away from flour just in case. For my own personal sake, because when you get that dry mouth, it really isn’t ideal for going right to the gym, but a vape is fantastic.

[00:13:36] Dominique White: Same thing with an edible. You can always pop in a gummy really quickly. And so something like that before the gym with a nice protein bar or something, you know, with nuts that has like a nice oil content, we’ll kind of kick that gummy in, make it act faster. So that would usually be my go to edible or like a nice CBD vape.

[00:14:00] Ellen Scanlon: Runner’s high, that balanced, happy, content feeling of wanting to run, or swim, or bike, forever. It’s something I hope everyone has more of. When I learned that the runner’s high is real, that it’s actually my body’s own endocannabinoid system feeling balanced, it made a lot of sense to me. That feeling is basically why I like weed.

[00:14:26] Ellen Scanlon: It’s also why I love Camino, one of my favorite women run edible brands. They create mood enhancing gummies with effects that are tailored to how you want to feel. Camino created freshly squeezed recover gummies with a minor cannabinoid called CBG, which is known for its anti inflammatory and anti anxiety effects.

[00:14:50] Ellen Scanlon: The recovery gummies aren’t just for exercise. Maybe you’re wrapping up a hectic workday, your mind is racing, and your body feels tense. However it happens, taking time for recovery is how you give your body what it needs to rest and heal. Camino’s recovery gummies are available in select states. I’m so excited to offer our listeners 20 percent off Camino gummies that ship right to your house.

[00:15:19] Ellen Scanlon: Some people like the recover gummies before exercise and others like them afterwards. I’d love to hear what works best for you. Use promo code DOTHEPOT when you visit shopkivaconfections. com for 20 percent off your order. I’ll add links and all the details to the show notes. Thank you for supporting the brands that support our show.

[00:15:50] Ellen Scanlon: New York based Ty Richards is the founder of Rage Release, a holistic lifestyle brand that brings together running, cannabis, and community. Ty’s goal is to find weed that helps him feel very present, whether he’s biking, boxing, or running.

[00:16:07] Thai Richards: One of the biggest things as an athlete is, for me personally, what cannabis comes in handy is, is a de stressor, right?

[00:16:12] Thai Richards: It helps with inflammatory issues and all of that stuff, right? So that’s what I’m mostly using it for. So I have like a little bit of, it’s called an Ivan, it’s a low heat vaporizer for herbs. So that’s what I like to use before my workouts. I have a little bit of that. Maybe about half a gram and then from there, I’m probably going to do the same thing after my workout and then to finish up the day, I’m probably going to have a cup of tea and then my cousin normally gets home pretty late at night from work.

[00:16:39] Thai Richards: So we normally roll a nice fat one and call it a day. I like the high where I’m super present. It gives me a perfect edge to where like my focus is exactly what it needs to be. If I’m boxing, I’m boxing from biking. I’m biking from running. I’m running. I’m in tune with my breath. I’m in tune with what needs to be done.

[00:16:58] Thai Richards: If I got to move left, I got to move right. All those sharp little movements and things like that. I’m, I’m in tune with that and it allows me to actually. I get the best of my workout as opposed to where maybe I was sober and I was overthinking something. So for me, it’s all about that awareness of your body and being able to critique whatever you need for your performance.

[00:17:17] Ellen Scanlon: You heard from Christine Apple at the beginning of the show. She loves a low dose edible before a long run.

[00:17:25] Christine Apple: I’ve been using it for years. I love a low dose daytime. Uh, a CBG. So not just THC, but it’s the minor cannabinoids, the daytime, the, the sativa uplifting ones. I’ll take like a quarter of a pearl. So it’s true microdosing.

[00:17:39] Christine Apple: So I’m not really getting heady, but it just, it’s enough to just like, let my mind wander and my body relax and to just really, really get into a workout. And really that’s, that’s what running is, is it’s meditation. I mean, you’re doing the same thing for 45 minutes to an hour. And that’s what I love about it is just that meditation of letting your mind wander and.

[00:17:58] Christine Apple: I also think it’s an excellent way to relax your body afterwards. Sometimes you’re going for a run. The hard time is around 15 minutes once you’ve started going, where if you can push through 15 minutes, you’re there and you get into the zone and you can just kind of go forever. Then it starts to feel really good.

[00:18:15] Christine Apple: And I find that, that I usually take it about 20 or 30 minutes before I go for a run. That transition into the meditative state where it just seems smoother and easier. It’s just really nice. I find myself Getting lost, not even really paying attention to where I’m going. It becomes almost an outer body experience.

[00:18:33] Christine Apple: And I feel like while the chaos is happening in my life, I can come back from a run and be like, Oh, I know what to do. I’ve got the idea, you know? And so it just kind of shakes things out. It helps me focus and it’s really micro dosing on the meditative stuff. So Pilates are running. Not so much on the orange theory, I think because there’s a lot of movement and there’s a lot of intense music and there’s things outside of my control and it goes back to that social aspect.

[00:18:57] Christine Apple: I really like being able to manage those and let my body relax and wander and yeah, Pilates and running.

[00:19:04] Ellen Scanlon: Training for rugby doesn’t usually involve long runs. So when Anna Simons would run, it was to relax and have fun. A low dose edible is a perfect pairing for her.

[00:19:16] Anna Symonds: I have really enjoyed going for a run, longer runs with a small to moderate edible.

[00:19:23] Anna Symonds: I would usually like kind of like a one to one chocolate, one to one ratio of CBD and THC. Have that before going out on a run. Because for rugby, going on a long run isn’t the way that you train. You do sprints and stuff. And I have found that for those long runs, it’s really nice. It really enhances the surroundings.

[00:19:43] Anna Symonds: It’s usually hopefully nature, like a trail run or, or being outside and, and just feeling your lungs moving and body and maybe like take the edge off the pain a little bit. Not so that you’re not connected to your body, but if anything, maybe connected a little more and you just don’t mind the pain in the same way.

[00:20:02] Ellen Scanlon: Anna has found that a microdose of cannabis helps her get into a flow state.

[00:20:07] Anna Symonds: Flow state. That’s a really important aspect of sports. When you’re like in the zone or you’re in the groove, it’s like time doesn’t exist and you’re just fully present and it’s one of the best feelings for an athlete. And I found for me that in experimenting a little bit, even at like rugby practice, if I took one square of chocolate that had a milligram of.

[00:20:29] Anna Symonds: THC and a milligram of CBD or up to, maybe I’d take like half of it or something. I felt like that helped encourage flow state for me.

[00:20:38] Ellen Scanlon: Evelyn Ames is a nurse living in California. She does not enjoy the first 20 minutes of a workout. Cannabis has helped her stick with it.

[00:20:49] Evelyn Eames: I’ve tried those free workout mixes in the past.

[00:20:51] Evelyn Eames: You need them. It makes your skin crawl. It’s awful. I, so yeah, I found that utilizing Sanibus is so much better for me to work out. I have a really hard time sticking past about 20 minutes of a workout. Like you get in there, you get in your rhythm and I’m like, I’m tired. I don’t want to do this anymore.

[00:21:12] Evelyn Eames: Like, I don’t want to be here. So Sanibus really helped me over that hump. I’m a very avid hiker living in the North Bay here. We have some beautiful trails. And one of my favorite things to do is to consume and then go for like a five, six hour long hike. And it’s just, it’s wonderful. It, it gets me out of my head.

[00:21:33] Evelyn Eames: It makes me really enjoy the effort that my body is putting in for that workout. And I’m going, I’m continuing to go, I’m pushing my body, I’m doing something healthy for my body.

[00:21:45] Ellen Scanlon: New Jersey based Tara Masu is the founder of Blazin Bakery. She likes cannabis for both yoga and running.

[00:21:54] Tara Misu: There was a period where I would keep a pen in my glove compartment.

[00:21:59] Tara Misu: And if I was going in for either cardio or yoga, those would be two of the things because I thought in yoga, you got into just a zone. It’s like keeps you in that. And, you know, yoga has that tie in of not just being body, but also being mind. So I thought that was a really cool combination. And then. You know, sometimes it makes time a little weird and I felt time went quicker on the treadmill.

[00:22:24] Tara Misu: You know, if you just like hit, hit, hit a vape, just a whisper, not to be high, but just to be like, Oh, look how much time has passed.

[00:22:32] Ellen Scanlon: Takesha Harvey and Deanna San Miguel are co founders of Can a Curious Mag, a digital women’s platform that showcases the many ways cannabis can enhance a woman’s lifestyle.

[00:22:44] Ellen Scanlon: Cannabis helps them with motivation and exercise recovery.

[00:22:48] Tekisha Harvey: If I’m not moving within those 15 minutes, I get very mellow. So it’s almost like I need to start moving and then let it kind of take over the wave or once I’ve already kind of warmed up. For me, especially in working out, that’s been the key.

[00:23:02] Tekisha Harvey: It’s like a little bit of time just to get you over that hump to be able to finish a workout and absolutely, absolutely love the topical for post workout recovery. With CBD in general, having the, the anti inflammatory properties so your muscles recover quicker and, and so I think that that’s definitely been a, a benefit, especially if you have like harder workouts where you are putting some strain on your body and you need it to perform again the next day or, you know, you need to be able to move the next day.

[00:23:31] Tekisha Harvey: And I have a lot of stiffness in my back and so a good workout and then the next day I’m like, I can’t move. So I need to be able to like reduce that inflammation quickly.

[00:23:39] Diana Sanmiguel: I use it more for post-recovery. It’s mostly about like if I’m dealing with pain or inflammation, the topicals. That has helped a lot for my back, lower back pain, bad salt baths that I like a lot.

[00:23:52] Diana Sanmiguel: I have used it sometimes before I do yoga. I think the first time I explore it, I took too many hits of my bay pin and I got a little high. And I just kept trying to tell myself, remember your high, remember your high, don’t attempt anything you wouldn’t attempt. That said, it was an amazing experience because I’ve done yoga for, at that point, probably like seven years.

[00:24:18] Diana Sanmiguel: And you do the stretching and you’re getting descent and all these things that happen when you do yoga. But that was like the first time that I felt like I was feeling my muscles and my body in a different dimension. So yeah, I think that means I was high, but it was a great feeling.

[00:24:33] Ellen Scanlon: Thank you to all of our guests.

[00:24:36] Ellen Scanlon: I hope their tips have given you some fun new workout ideas. Do you have a story about weed and movement? I would love to hear it. Please reach out at high at do the pot. com or DM us at do the pot. Tune in next week for the final episode of this series. I’ll talk with a physician and pain specialist about how cannabis is helping with chronic and acute pain.

[00:25:02] Ellen Scanlon: And we’ll learn why professional athletes are the canary in the coal mine, leading the way for people who want to try cannabis instead of opioids for pain relief. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend. We love new listeners and are here to help everyone feel confident about cannabis.

[00:25:29] Ellen Scanlon: Hi friends. I’m thrilled to share that how to do the pot is being considered for a podcast award and we need your support to win. Please take a moment to nominate us for the People’s Choice Awards at podcastawards. com before July 31st. That’s podcastawards. com and the link will be in the show notes. It should only take a few minutes.

[00:25:53] Ellen Scanlon: Your vote will help us reach more people and spread the love about cannabis for health, well being and for fun. Thank you for supporting the show. I will let you know the results.

[00:26:17] Ellen Scanlon: Thank you for listening to how to do the pot for lots more information and past episodes. Visit do the pot. com. Are you one of the thousands of people who love how to do the pots newsletter? If you’re not getting it, please sign up at do the pot. com. And if you like How to Do the Pot, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

[00:26:40] Ellen Scanlon: It really helps people find the show. Thank you to writer Joanna Silver and producers Mattie Fair and Nick Patry. I’m Ellen Scanlon, and stay tuned for more of How to Do the Pot.