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REALLY?
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR
Published: August 31, 2004
THE CLAIM -- Sex before an athletic event can hinder performance.
THE FACTS -- No one knows exactly when it got started, but the idea that athletes should abstain from sex before a crucial game has been a golden rule of sports for centuries. Pliny the Elder may have been the first to draw a link, but with a positive spin. ''Athletes when sluggish are revitalized by lovemaking,'' he wrote in A.D. 77.
More than a millennium later, however, it has become routine for coaches in almost every sport to forbid their players to have sex before game night, to conserve energy and increase aggression. Boxers like Lennox Lewis and Muhammad Ali have said they would go without sex for weeks before a big fight.
But perhaps the only scientific study to investigate the claim directly found that it was a myth. In 1995, Dr. Tommy Boone of the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minn., measured athletic performance in 11 men after they had intercourse the night before and then, on another day, after they had abstained the night before.
The subjects were given a treadmill test, a routine measure of athletic endurance. Each subject's peak performance was the same on both days, suggesting that sex the night before had not slowed them down, Dr. Boone said.
As for aggression, in 1999 Italian scientists found that testosterone levels in men climbed as sexual activity increased, suggesting that more rendezvous in the bedroom might lead to higher rates of aggression the next day -- and enhance athletic performance.
THE BOTTOM LINE -- Sex does not impair an athlete's performance. ANAHAD O'CONNOR
New York Times
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR
Published: August 31, 2004
THE CLAIM -- Sex before an athletic event can hinder performance.
THE FACTS -- No one knows exactly when it got started, but the idea that athletes should abstain from sex before a crucial game has been a golden rule of sports for centuries. Pliny the Elder may have been the first to draw a link, but with a positive spin. ''Athletes when sluggish are revitalized by lovemaking,'' he wrote in A.D. 77.
More than a millennium later, however, it has become routine for coaches in almost every sport to forbid their players to have sex before game night, to conserve energy and increase aggression. Boxers like Lennox Lewis and Muhammad Ali have said they would go without sex for weeks before a big fight.
But perhaps the only scientific study to investigate the claim directly found that it was a myth. In 1995, Dr. Tommy Boone of the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minn., measured athletic performance in 11 men after they had intercourse the night before and then, on another day, after they had abstained the night before.
The subjects were given a treadmill test, a routine measure of athletic endurance. Each subject's peak performance was the same on both days, suggesting that sex the night before had not slowed them down, Dr. Boone said.
As for aggression, in 1999 Italian scientists found that testosterone levels in men climbed as sexual activity increased, suggesting that more rendezvous in the bedroom might lead to higher rates of aggression the next day -- and enhance athletic performance.
THE BOTTOM LINE -- Sex does not impair an athlete's performance. ANAHAD O'CONNOR
New York Times
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