It’s one popularly held be- lief that MythBusters seems to have left untested: does sexual intercourse before sports games or events affect an athlete’s performance?
“That’s exactly what it is — superstition,” says Doug Richards, medical director of the David L. Macintosh Sports Medicine Clinic at U of T.
OLGA ABELEVA/THE VARSITY
The days of professional athletes being sequestered away from home by coaches try- ing to prevent them from getting a little pre-match exercise are long gone. “Many professional coaches … now let married players have their wives come to the team hotel the night before the game,” notes Richards.
There are some exceptions, though. Mark Leung, a sports physician at the Macintosh Clinic, points out that the only time he’s heard of athletes abstaining be- fore games is professional hockey players during the playoffs. “Cer- tain players prefer to not have any
psychological distractions, if they consider [sex] a psychological dis- traction,” he says.
The days of official policies prohibiting sexual intercourse before events are over. “There are no rules about … engaging in sexual activity before games,” confirms Richards.
The Varsity Blues, U of T’s inter- collegiate teams, don’t require their athletes to refrain from sexual ac- tivity before games either. Contrast
that with Muhammad Ali; the box- er reportedly wouldn’t have sex for six weeks before a fight.
Richards says there’s absolutely no empirical support for the idea that athletic achievement is neg- atively affected by sexual activity prior to games or events. “None of the studies I’ve seen support the idea that there is any effect on performance.”
Leung points out that any studies that looked into the effect of sexual activity in performance would have to be conducted after-the-fact. “It would be difficult to do a random- ized control trial,” he says, pointing outthatsuchanexperimentwould be unlikely to pass an academic ethics board.
Still, as Richards points out, the evidence on the supposed nega- tive effects of sex before sports points to a clear conclusion: “it’s a load of nonsense.”
