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How does sex affect athletic performance?

For athletes at their peak preparing for the next event is often the most important thing in their life. We are all aware of how things like diet, training, stress, and other medical conditions can affect performance, but one of the important parts of life we often overlook is sex and how your sex life affects performance in sport. In this article, we will examine the link between sex and sport.

The sex life of athletes in the public eye has often been the focus of the tabloid press, but this is far more likely to be condemning articles on which members of any given sports team are sleeping with women for hire through websites like Escort Agency Cologne, a high-class escorting services catering for residents and visitors to most major cities in Germany. The truth is that although escort agencies are popular with many men who travel for work like athletes are on tour, however, the truth is that in athletic circles it is widely believed that sex should be avoided in the run-up to competitive events. Writing in the National Geographic Ian Shrier, a sports medicine specialist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, summarises the current research into the link as follows.

  • There’s no physical evidence suggesting that sex before competition is bad for athletic performance. 
  • Some studies suggest that sex before exercise may help athletes by raising their testosterone levels, the hormone of both sexual desire and aggression. 
  • Sex the night before a sporting event could make an athlete more tired, although this has been disproved. 
  • Some scientists claim that abstinence could help athletes concentrate better.

As you can see although many athletes tend to abstain from sex before competing there is evidence to suggests that it can be beneficial. So perhaps Deontay Wilder’s sex life makes more sense than we previously thought.

Sex, sport and testosternone in men
Professor of endocrinology at the University of L’Aquila in Italy, Emmanuele A. Jannini is an expert on hormone secretion and a firm belief that sex stimulates the production of testosterone in men and therefore boosts aggression which should improve athletic performance. She states that abstaining from sex for three months, which is common for athletes preparing to compete, can mean that testosterone levels drop to that of a child. 

Advantages for women
Testosterone is a male-dominant hormone, but that does not mean sex doesn’t provide advantages for female athletes too. Barry Komisaruk, a psychology professor at Rutgers University in Newark in New Jersey, believes that sex can help to combat muscle pain and other sports injuries in women as when sexually stimulated women release pain-blocking chemicals that can last for up to a day after intercourse. In addition, Komisaruk found that vaginal stimulation can impact muscle tension in the legs, increasing or decreasing depending on the person, which can also have a strong impact depending on the sports.

As you can see there are several important aspects of sex and sport to consider, for both males and females and a lot of research still to be done in the field. However, if the new breakthroughs in medical science like those outlined above are to be believed, athletes will be happy to hear that the common 3-month, pre-competition abstinence may soon become a thing of the past for professional athletes. 

What do you think?

Written by Mark Greene

Mark Greene is writer and life coach dedicated to helping men to perform at peak level. He shares dating advice, style tips and strategies for building wealth and success.

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