Cannabis Made Me Train Harder — Or At Least I Thought It Did

For years, I genuinely thought cannabis made me better in the gym.

Not stronger in the obvious sense. I wasn't having a smoke and suddenly sticking another 20kg on the bar. It was more about what happened in my head.

I'd smoke, get myself to the gym, put my headphones in and disappear into my own little world.

And at the time, I thought I was unbelievably focused.

Looking back now, years after stopping cannabis completely, I'm not actually sure that I was.

I think cannabis might have changed how training felt rather than how well I was actually performing.

And there's quite a big difference between the two.

I Smoked Cannabis for Years

Cannabis was a fairly big part of my life from my teens into my late twenties.

I'm not talking about somebody who had the occasional smoke at a party. At certain points it was simply part of my normal routine.

Eventually, around my late twenties, I stopped.

These days, cannabis isn't for me. I don't particularly like the smell anymore and I definitely don't like the way it makes me feel.

That's my personal position though.

I'm not writing this to tell somebody else what they should or shouldn't do. I'm also not trying to rewrite my past and pretend I didn't enjoy it, because I did.

What interests me now is what happened when cannabis and training crossed over.

Because at the time, I honestly believed it helped.

Smoking Before the Gym

There were times when I'd smoke cannabis before training.

Then I'd get to the gym, put my headphones in and that was basically it.

The outside world disappeared.

I wasn't bothered about people walking around me. I wasn't thinking about whatever crap might have been happening outside the gym. I wasn't particularly interested in what anyone else was doing.

There was me, the music and whatever weight was sitting in front of me.

And I fucking loved it.

I've written before about how completely different my headspace can become once the headphones go in and I start training. Cannabis seemed to intensify that feeling even more.

At least that's how I remember it.

But there's an important word there:

Feeling.

Because feeling incredibly focused doesn't necessarily mean you're actually performing better.

Then I Stopped Smoking Cannabis

When I eventually stopped smoking, I noticed something.

Training didn't suddenly become terrible. I didn't lose all my strength and I obviously carried on going to the gym.

But something about the ritual had gone.

Smoke.
Gym.
Headphones.
Zone.

Without really realising it, I'd created a sequence that told my brain it was time to train.

Later on, something completely different started doing a similar job.

Pre-workout.

I'd take my pre-workout, drive to the gym, get my headphones on, start getting fired up and there was that feeling again.

Obviously I'm not saying cannabis and pre-workout are remotely the same thing chemically.

I'm talking about the ritual.

You do something before training enough times and your brain starts associating it with what comes next.

For me, the smoke may have become part of that switch.

Did Cannabis Actually Improve My Gym Performance?

This is where my own experience becomes interesting, because the research doesn't really support the idea that THC makes you physically perform better.

A 2017 systematic review examining cannabis and exercise found no evidence that THC improved aerobic performance or strength. Another systematic review looking specifically at acute cannabis use before exercise concluded that it tended to impair measures such as the ability to maintain effort and physical work capacity rather than improve them.

More recent controlled research has pointed in a similar direction. In a 2024 study involving 14 participants, THC-containing cannabis taken before cycling resulted in lower average power during a 20-minute time trial compared with control conditions.

That doesn't mean somebody can take those cycling results and tell me exactly what cannabis was doing to my bench press years ago.

They can't.

Resistance training isn't cycling, the studies in this area aren't enormous, doses differ and people's responses to cannabis aren't identical.

There's also a difference between somebody using cannabis regularly and somebody consuming THC immediately before exercising.

A systematic review of chronic cannabis users found no significant differences in several measures of exercise performance between users and non-users, although the researchers also made it clear that the evidence base was limited.

So the honest answer isn't:

"Cannabis destroys your performance."

And it definitely isn't:

"Cannabis improves your performance."

The more accurate answer from the research I've read is that there's no convincing evidence that THC is a performance enhancer, and using it immediately before exercise may actually impair certain types of performance.

Which made me look at my own experience very differently.

Maybe I Wasn't More Focused — Maybe I Just Felt More Focused

This is the bit I find interesting now.

When I was high and training, music felt different.

I was inside my own head.

Distractions seemed less important.

The gym became this little bubble where whatever was happening outside it didn't really matter.

And when you're experiencing that, it's very easy to think:

I'm absolutely locked in here.

Maybe I was.

But being mentally absorbed in something isn't automatically the same as producing more force, lifting more weight or performing better.

My perception of the session had changed.

The session itself might not have improved at all.

In fact, based on what we currently know about THC and exercise performance, there's every possibility that I felt like I was performing better while physically getting no benefit from it whatsoever.

That's quite a strange thing to think about.

The Ritual Might Have Been More Powerful Than the Cannabis

The older I've got, the more I've realised how much ritual matters around training.

People develop their own little routines without even noticing they're doing it.

Mine now involves getting ready, taking my pre-workout, travelling to the gym, getting my headphones in and switching into training mode.

Someone else's might be putting on the same hoodie.

It might be the drive there.

A particular playlist.

A certain warm-up.

Walking through those gym doors.

I've trained in enough different ways over the years to realise that the routines surrounding your training can become almost as familiar as the training itself.

You repeat something often enough and eventually your brain knows what comes next.

Work.

That's what I think cannabis became for me.

A cue.

Not necessarily a performance enhancer.

Strength Came From Years of Training — Not From Being High

There's another reason I look at it differently now.

I've become considerably stronger since those days.

My biggest improvements didn't come while smoking cannabis.

They came through years of training, learning technique, changing programmes, getting things wrong, getting injured, recovering, coming back and continuing to train.

When I look at what actually went into building my strength over more than a decade, there's nothing magical about it.

It was time and consistency.

Cannabis may have changed how some sessions felt.

It didn't put the years of work in for me.

Would I Train High Now?

No.

It doesn't appeal to me anymore and I don't like how cannabis makes me feel these days.

That's where I am now.

But I'm also not embarrassed to talk about having used it.

I think pretending we've always made exactly the same choices we make today is pointless.

People change.

Our habits change.

Our opinions change.

And sometimes when you look back at something with a bit of distance, you understand it differently.

Younger me would probably have sworn cannabis helped me train.

Ask me now and my answer is different.

I think it helped create a particular feeling around training.

The music.

The isolation.

The focus.

The ritual.

And I interpreted that feeling as improved performance.

Maybe it wasn't.

Maybe the most powerful thing wasn't cannabis at all.

Maybe it was simply the fact that my brain had learned:

This is what we do before we train.

And once the headphones went in, it was time to work.

The Bottom Line

I'm not writing this as an argument for cannabis or against cannabis.

I'm writing it because I've experienced training on both sides of it.

At the time, I thought cannabis made me a better lifter.

Years later, I'm not convinced it did.

Current research doesn't provide convincing evidence that THC improves exercise performance, and some research suggests using THC shortly before exercise can impair certain measures of performance.

My own experience still felt very real though.

That's the interesting part.

Because sometimes something can make a workout feel better without actually making you perform better.

For me, cannabis may have done exactly that.

I thought it made me a better lifter.

Looking back now, I think it probably just changed what being a lifter felt like.

And those are two very different things.

Sources

• Kennedy MC. Cannabis: Exercise performance and sport. A systematic review. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport. 2017;20(9):825–829. DOI: 10.1016/j.jsams.2017.03.012.
• Charron J, Carey V, Marcotte L'Heureux V, Roy P, Comtois AS, Ferland PM. Acute effects of cannabis consumption on exercise performance: a systematic and umbrella review. Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness. 2021;61(4):551–561. DOI: 10.23736/S0022-4707.20.11003-X.
• Kramer A, Sinclair J, Sharpe L, Sarris J. Chronic cannabis consumption and physical exercise performance in healthy adults: a systematic review. Journal of Cannabis Research. 2020;2:34. DOI: 10.1186/s42238-020-00037-x.
• Cannabis containing THC impairs 20-min cycling time trial performance irrespective of the method of inhalation. Journal of Applied Physiology. 2024. PMID: 38299223.