Alcohol
Training Effect
Every time you get drunk, you lose approximately 14 days of training effect. You lose all you have worked to gain. One night of drinking and two weeks of training effect are erased. You are wasting your time and your career.
Training Hormones
Alcohol suppresses your training hormones for up to 96 hours (four days). Basically you are at practice but the hormones you need to gain training effect and condition are not. You practice but no improvement comes.
Performance Potential
The effect of recent heavy drinking lowers your performance potential by 11.4% before you even step on the field. The best you can be is about 88.6% of your best (100%).
Muscles
Your muscles will become fatigued quicker. Lactic acid levels which fatigue your muscles, increases much earlier and primary muscles that you depend on shut down or are slower and weaker.
Lungs
Your breathing will be much heavier and you will hyperventilate much earlier in practice or a game. You will not be able to catch your breath during breaks in activity. Your breathing rate will be very high and you will hyperventilate or lose control of your breathing. Your lungs are trying to get oxygen to your working muscles and clear carbon dioxide (CO2) from your system but they cannot. Your muscles begin to suffocate
Heart
Your heart rate will be much higher and over time your cardiac output will decrease. The oxygen rich blood will not reach your working muscles. The lactic acid will build up in the muscles and you will slow down and be weaker.
Muscle Fuels
It will take you longer to reload muscle fuels (glycogen). Normally we can reload our muscles with fuels in 8-12 hours, but after drinking it can be 16-24 hours.
Recovery
You will take much longer to recover from the stress of training. Normal recovery from maximal stress is 24 hours but after drinking, it can be 48-96 hours.
Dehydration
Alcohol is a diuretic, which means it makes you urinate. You lose lots of body fluids and all your physiological functions decrease.
Hormone Conversion
You cannot turn pre-hormones into training hormones. Out with all your urine go most of your water soluble vitamins, including the B vitamins, some of which are responsible for converting pre-hormones into training hormones. Until these levels are back you cannot make hormones for training.
Muscle Repair
Your ability to repair damaged muscle is reduced. When we train muscle is damaged. We repair it by making protein into new fibers. Drinking slows down this repair process. It is in your speed muscles that this process is most reduced.
Reflex
Alcohol slows down the reflex in regard to reaction time. Alcohol affects reaction time and hand eye coordination, which are two of the most important functions in sports.
Conclusions
Alcohol is a metabolic poison, clear and simple. t affects the entire body and all body systems, especially those that control high performance. No serious athlete should use alcohol.
Marijuana
Marijuana negatively affects the CNS (Central Nervous System). When you smoke pot, it is in your CNS for thirty days. It also accumulates over time. This means if you smoke it daily, it is building up in increasing levels. Marijuana is every bit as damaging to your brain and CNS as alcohol is to your muscles, lungs and heart. Combine both and you are nowhere near the athlete you could be. Listed below are the most serious effects on athlete performance, from marijuana use.
Motivation ~ Focus
Most athletes who are marijuana users have motivational problems. It is hard enough to maintain focus day after day and game after game when we are healthy and rested. If you use drugs it creates additional distractions in these areas. The ability to be highly focused and motivated is jeopardized by marijuana use.
Processing ~ Multi Tasking ~ Confusion
To function effectively our CNS (central nervous system) must make quick, responsive decisions and also sort out situational priorities, strategies as well as the order in which we must determine the importance of options as well as responses. We also must have the ability to take in all outside input and establish which of those signals are most important. In athletics if we cannot multi task or do many things at once our effectiveness decreases. Marijuana affects the brains complex ability to do many things at once and to sort out that inflowing input, establish priorities for action and response.
Visual Tracking ~ Depth Perception
Marijuana use also affects the visual system. Recent studies have shown that losses occur in the ability to visually track or follow moving objects. It also decreases the ability to determine accurate visual depth, or for example in basketball, baseball or lacrosse, to tell how far or near an incoming object is or to determine at the same time, the velocity or speed at which it is traveling. This would be critical in making pre-movements, for instance, to catch an incoming pass or block a shot.
Reflex ~ Reaction ~ Precision ~ Accuracy
Marijuana reduces our reflex or reaction time. You are slower at reacting to outside stimulus. Precision and accuracy are also affected.
Myographic (Muscle) Impulses ~ Biomechanics
Even the electrical impulses that our brain sends to our muscles to make them react or even contract and relax are affected. This has an affect on the exactness of our movements or biomechanics. This means our skill level is decreased.
Movement Memory ~ Coordination
One of the main sites in the brain affected by marijuana is the area which is responsible for movement memory, or the ability to remember the exact way to create skilled movements over and over. Missed movements or uncoordinated skills make you less effective.
Confusion ~ Critical Evaluation Of Self
The cumulative or collective build up of chemicals in your brain and CNS creates many negative impacts on your ability to be at your best. nfortunately it also affects a part of the brain that has to do with our critical evaluation of self. This is very dangerous for any athlete at any age or level, because it allows you to somehow rationalize that using marijuana is o.k. or that it has no affect on your performance. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Marijuana use will prevent you from reaching your full potential.
Rerouting Functional Users
If you want to be a great athlete and reach your full potential, you must be focused. Athletes who use marijuana regularly become functional users. Some are still very good, but nowhere near the athlete they could be. The human brain is so amazing that it basically learns how to reroute these functions and abilities that are affected by the chemicals to other parts of the brain, which have no ability to do those tasks. They take over and learn how to function as best they can, however it is far from optimal.
Recreational Drug Use And You
One thing is for sure; athletes are concerned with performance. Our goal is to train with the best methods possible and to get rid of as many negative factors as possible. Alcohol and Marijuana have ruined many careers. If you use them, you will never be as good as you could have been.
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Remember when you are not training,
That somewhere, someone is training… And when you meet them, They will beat you… Matveyev USSR
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Remember when you are partying,
That somewhere, someone is not partying… They will beat you… Underwood USA
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Nothing in the sport world is truer.
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