Who remembers seeing Pumping Iron, when Arnold was seen at the end of another Mr. Olympia victory holding a joint? What! Arnold? A man who dedicated his entire youth and early adulthood to gaining the best body in the world, smoking dope?
Don’t be too surprised. Don’t be too shocked. Don’t freak out.
I really don’t go in for the whole shock-horror thing. One joint after the win, 10 joints after it… so what? You know Arnold isn’t waking up in the morning each day and the first thing he does is find his tobacco tin and his bag of green. No. Arnold’s hitting the gym. Arnold’s eating healthily; he’s out there doing stuff. He isn’t sitting eating junk, drinking beer, smoking more pot and watching Jerry Springer day in day out.
Really, the problems for people only start when things in life become too frequent and obsessive, be it drink, drugs, sex, cleanliness, other habits, whatever. Moderation is the key to living a healthy lifestyle.
A joint every once in a while is not going to harm anything.
But, I really wouldn’t advise smoking pot on the days you train. Not if you want to get the most out of your session.
It’s a well known fact – particularly to those who have tried it – that smoking marijuana lowers your response rate. It makes you feel dopey and drowsy, and makes you coordination and balance deteriorate. It also makes you feel lethargic and lazy.
In light of this (no pun intended) it would be preposterous for anyone to think having any level of marijuana in the system whilst trying to train would be of benefit.
In fact, the only benefit I could possibly think of is the fact smoking dope gives you the munchies, which would help you to eat more food. But given you won’t feel like training and smoking dope will ruin your training sessions, this is a moot point.
Marijuana also increases estrogen levels. So you can only imagine that by regularly smoking marijuana, you will begin to scupper your lean muscle mass gains, and be way more susceptible to putting on fat. This is the complete opposite of what bodybuilding is about.
If you are a regular pot smoker, then the chances are that you are damaging your gains, so you may want to look into cutting down on the old green stuff and seeing how your fare. You may well find that you are much better off for it.
At the end of the day, we all make our choices and have our own ways. That’s life.