Cannabidiol, more often known as CBD, is starting to gain tremendous popularity for many health-related reasons. While, initially, a lot of people would use it for anxiety relief, now, athletes are also using it to help them properly recover from their intense training sessions.
How CBD Helps with Your Workout Routines
CBD becomes beneficial to the body once it interacts with the endocannabinoid system (ECS). This specific system’s main role is to achieve homeostasis, or to keep the body in a healthy, balanced state.
Hence, it regulates mood and various bodily functions, such as cognition, digestion, and metabolism. It also interacts with the brain’s receptors to regulate body pains. Because of this, products like CBD oil makes a great post-workout recovery tool, especially for preventing muscle pains.
Are you curious about what CBD can do for your training? Here are four reasons why more and more athletes are starting to appreciate it:
- Muscle Relaxant
Athletes who are trying to gain muscle mass are a lot likely to experience DOMS, or Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, especially when they’ve pushed themselves too hard. Muscle tensions usually make the pain a lot worse. Unfortunately, these pains can last longer than what you’d normally expect. Thus, you’d want to do everything you can to help your body heal as quickly as possible.
In some cases, especially when the pain is too much, benzodiazepines, like Valium, are used. These drugs interact with the body’s GABA receptors. These play a huge role in regulating your muscles’ ability to relax. CBD has the same pain treatment properties as benzodiazepines, but minus their chemical nature and side effects.
- Pain Reliever with Anti-Inflammatory Properties
Inflammation is one of the biggest issues that prevent proper muscle recovery. Because of the delayed recovery, people become more prone to lingering soreness and injuries.
Fortunately, CBD has anti-inflammatory properties that can help speed up the rate of healing. Although it isn’t advisable to work out as soon as the pain subsides, the faster recovery rate at least means that you’ll be able to train in full force sooner.
- Mood Booster
CBD is also commonly known as a mood enhancer, especially for people who are dealing with stress, depression, and anxiety. Since CBD is known to have the ability to alleviate pain, using it can improve mood by eliminating possible causes of stress, such as muscle pains.
What does a good mood have to do with recovery? It significantly minimizes the amount of stress hormones that the body produces. This allows the body’s systems to perform their duties in the most efficient way possible because there are no stress hormones preventing them from doing their job.
- Sleep Enhancer
Aside from eating the right post-workout food and exercising only within your body’s limit, sleeping adequately is a must for proper recovery. The problem is, muscle pains and stress may prevent you from having a peaceful sleep.
If you’re having trouble sleeping after a hard workout, CBD may be able to help. In fact, CBD is known to have therapeutic effects in people who are dealing with insomnia.
Using CBD for Training Recovery
Before anything else, make sure that you’ve gotten your doctor’s approval before you try out CBD. You don’t want to use it when you’re dealing with health issues that will only worsen when you take the said compound.
CBD products come in a variety of forms. The most common ones are oils and tinctures, but, nowadays, you’ll also find capsules, gummies, vapes, balms, and lotions in the market.
If you’re planning to use CBD for training recovery, it’s mostly a matter of choosing whether you prefer oral or topical administration. The recommended dosages are:
- 1-6mg of CBD per 10 lbs. of body weight
- 5-10mg of CBD per day, increasing by 5-10mg until you feel the desired effects
Take CBD in small quantities first to see how your systems will react. The aforementioned dosages are a normal starting point, but it may take you a few trials before you figure out how much CBD works well for you. In any case, ingesting CBD or applying it topically over sore muscles is usually a great way to help you recover from tough workouts.
Conclusion: CBD Helps Improve Your Post-Workout State
While CBD doesn’t directly contribute to muscle health and growth, it’s more than useful in treating pains that can delay recovery. Hence, if your doctor approves of your use of it, CBD is certainly worth trying out.
As you may already know, a slow recovery is one of the biggest hurdles in training improvement. Since CBD is known to help users rest and sleep better, you can expect CBD to give you the rightful recovery that you deserve from all the hard work you do at the gym.
