“Anna Symonds, education manager for East Fork Cultivars, has been a rugby player for 18 years and attributes a lot of her longevity as a professional athlete to cannabis.
While she experimented with cannabis as a teenager, she discontinued this practice when she got more serious about sports. After she smoked with some teammates after a game, she experienced immediate healing and muscle relaxation. “I started to have this mental shift to seeing cannabis as medicine.” After a back injury five years ago, cannabis proved to be the only thing that would provide her with pain relief and muscle relaxation while increasing her functionality without the side effects of other medications.
By microdosing before practice with a 1.1 full spectrum chocolate edible containing 1 mg THC, Symonds found the sweet spot where her pain would reduce and her mind gets into a flow state where she was fully present and performing fully optimally.
Cannabis as an aid for performance and recovery
While Antonio DeRose, head of Green House Healthy, has used cannabis recreationally for more than 15 years, he didn’t begin using this plant to help with his performance and recovery as a trail runner until about five to six years ago. He describes himself as a “wake and bakes” person. “When I wake up in the morning, I use cannabis to recharge my endocannabinoid system. Then I do some sort of physical activity.”
DeRose prefers a high-dose edible followed by some flower before he runs. “Cannabis is a bronchodilator, so it allows me to absorb more oxygen with each breath.” He finds cannabis aids in recovery in calming down his nervous system and reducing inflammation. Topicals work well for isolated areas where he has specific pain. Also, he uses hemp as a nutritional supplement, noting that as the body regenerates bones every 10 years, technically he’s made of hemp.