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Why Athletes are Microdosing Shrooms for Fitness
So, you’re a gym junkie, a devoted runner, or a swimmer, mountain biker, golfer, or any other kind of athlete. No matter your sport, you love to move your body and you’re always looking to hit that next level, up your game, master that new skill, or hit that PB. Your cupboard is filled with supplements to give you energy, help with recovery, boost your focus, give you motivation, and hopefully make you a supercharged version of yourself.
But maybe you’re stuck at a plateau, feeling unmotivated, tired, uninspired, and taking way too long to recover between workouts. Here’s where amateur and professional athletes are microdosing psilocybin for that nature-made boost in performance and recovery.
Unlike many manufactured supplements which are full of caffeine, chemicals, and additives to provide a temporary boost, psilocybin is a natural compound that works at a deep level inside the brain to change habits, shift your perspective, allow you to connect more deeply with your body, and move past mental blocks and perceived limitations.
Of course, the most powerful benefits are seen when you work with the mushrooms – to set powerful intentions, follow through on your promises to yourself, and build new habits which psilocybin will help cement into your neural pathways (more on that later).
The research is still very new in this space, but so far, very promising. With the countless anecdotal accounts, however, science is scrambling to keep up. In today’s blog, we’re going to share the existing science on how psilocybin works in the brain and body to boost athletic performance, plus a few first-hand accounts of magic mushrooms working their magic for fitness fanatics. Let’s dig into it.
Already well-aware of the benefits of psilocybin for exercise? Shop our bestselling Boomerang Microdose Capsules designed to boost athletic performance.
Probably the most well-known benefit of psilocybin, neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to adapt and change. It is the brain literally rewiring itself in response to learning. There’s a few ways this applies to fitness:
Often, athletes get ‘stuck’ in an unhelpful habit or movement pattern – a wonky golf swing, a knee-jarring run stride, a lifting plateau, and on and on. With the increased neuroplasticity from psilocybin, people are able to break out of those well-worn neural pathways and build new, optimized pathways in the brain for the movement pattern they’d like to adapt. Small changes become magnified as they’re quite literally rewired into the brain.
A select group of pro-golfers are experimenting with this very tactic to break away from unhelpful habits, change their technique, work through mental blocks, and improve their game.
For those struggling with motivation, psilocybin meets you halfway – magnifying every action by building new pathways in the brain. It helps your new practice become habit much quicker for a lifestyle change that lasts. It helps empower you to take charge of your life and make changes to your fitness, your eating habits, your sleep, and your mental environment.
Psilocybin helps us see ourselves and our surroundings in a new and more positive way. Things that seemed overwhelming, scary, or out of our reach start to look more doable. We feel more capable to try new things, to reach that next level, and just to show up for ourselves.
As we’ve seen with psilocybin and PTSD research, magic mushrooms help to modulate the fear extinction response – essentially helping us feel less afraid and anxious. So, for that person who’s new or returning to the gym after a long period away, that microdose can help them conquer the fear of returning to the weight rack. Or that athlete who tore their ACL and fears getting re-injured in their sport may have the courage to get back out there on the field.
Magic mushrooms modulate serotonin receptors, which play a big role in your mood and emotions. So, for those dealing with low mood or lackluster motivation to hit the gym, psilocybin helps you get back to your mental best.
By activating 5-HT2A receptors, psilocybin helps reduce inflammation in the body. This can be especially helpful for athletes to recover more quickly between sessions, help prevent inflammation-related injuries, and heal the body from existing injuries.
Learn more about psilocybin’s role in reducing inflammation and treating chronic pain conditions in our blog.
Psilocybin helps people feel more connected and in-tune with their bodies. So, when you’re trying to change your swing, optimize your stride, or create that mind-muscle connection in your lifts, you can more easily communicate with and receive signals from your body.
Many athletes who microdose report that the game seems to slow down and they’re able to see the larger environment around them more clearly, feel their muscles engaging, be cognizant of their full movement pattern, and respond to stimuli easier.
Dennis McKenna, an Ethnopharmacologist and Research Pharmacognosist says: “…we’re programmed to filter stuff out – psychedelics temporarily disrupt that – they let the background come forward and you notice things about the environment that normally you would suppress because your mind deems them not relevant for immediate survival…Suddenly what’s right in front of you is not as important and you can pay attention to the things in the background that you’re programmed to ignore.”
“…my decision to try shrooms and fight. What I’ve noticed is the most effective way to spar/fight is by being patient and watching for the right shots—not being some aggro gym bro, but actually watching body language and noticing repeating patterns. Doing a relatively small amount of shrooms (little more than micro) helped me with everything I just mentioned. It helped me focus on my lungs and my breathing, it helped me stay happy and loose while not overthinking... I would notice patterns and mistakes in what my teammates were doing. What was unexpected, though, was how I wasn’t as nervous about getting hit. Maybe it sounds weird, but if I get popped—I actually smile. Something about those sessions helped me break past a barrier I had set for myself with my health, my inexperience, and my other bullshit excuses for why I couldn’t fight. The couple of times doing shrooms and training really got me past those roadblocks.”
Many athletes have reported their physical performance improved significantly after microdosing – they jumped higher, their reflexes were quicker, their movements were more fluid, and they were able to push past physical limits like muscle fatigue.
Researchers believe that psilocybin helps reduce the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) so you feel less fatigued during activity than you otherwise would.
For many athletes, pressure and anxiety are their main opponents. They psyche themselves out, put too much pressure on themselves, and don’t perform at their highest level in the high-stakes world of competition. Psilocybin helps calm the mind so athletes can focus on the game without the panic and pressure in the mind.
And it’s not just serious athletes who experience the mind madness – think about the average gym-goer who skips their workout because their mind is being blah, or who stops a few reps short of failure. Psilocybin helps silence that inner negative, limiting voice so we can reach our own personal potential.
A PGA golfer credits psilocybin for his top finishes, saying, “Psilocybin allows me to get a deep breath on the course that I haven’t been able to get in years.”
Mike Tyson has said that “the focus you get from shrooms doesn’t compare to anything.”
“Around the tenth day, I head out for a run ….within minutes, though, I realized that I was completely, one hundred percent in tune with my body, my breathing, and everything around me. It’s difficult to describe. I wasn’t tripping (the microdose I was taking was pretty much imperceptible), but it was like I was running for the first time in my life. I was completely engaged with what was happening. The trail is slightly technical, and usually there’d be places where I’d have to slow down and really concentrate on where I was putting my feet down, but I was flying, gliding along. My body was cooperating with my mind, and my mind was in concert with nature. It sounds so corny, but I felt like I was one with the universe. It was the best run of my life. I’ve had equally amazing runs since, thanks to mushrooms, but that first one was basically religious.”
To get the most pronounced benefits for sports and fitness, we recommend microdosing 30 minutes before your training session – up to five times per week.
We created our Boomerang Microdose Capsules specifically for athletic performance with a blend of golden teacher magic mushrooms, rhodiola, maca, and red ginseng to help with muscle function and recovery, boost energy and stamina, improve concentration and endurance, and lower inflammation. The ingredients that make it happen:
Rhodiola: an adaptogen which helps the body adapt to stress – reducing physical and mental fatigue, boosting antioxidants in the body, improving muscle performance, shortening reaction time, and decreasing perceived exertion.
Maca: helps boost energy, increase stamina and concentration, and improve endurance – read more about Maca’s athletic benefits in this study.
Red Ginseng: well known in traditional Chinese medicine, red ginseng increases energy and reduces inflammation. Read more about how it works to repair muscle damage in runners in this study.
Golden Teacher magic mushrooms: the most studied strain of magic mushrooms, golden teachers are known to direct your focus inwards and facilitate profound insights and uplifting experiences. When combined with the added natural compounds above, the result is a powerful, performance-boosting elixir that both calms and motivates.
Choose from microdose capsules with 75mg, 125mg, or 250mg of golden teacher magic mushrooms. Most people find 125mg to be their ideal dose to start off with.
Have questions about psilocybin, microdosing for fitness, or just want to chat? Reach out to us anytime to chat with a Sero team member, psychedelic therapist, or an experienced psychonaut. We’re always here to help!
