Can CBG and CBD Motivate You to Workout?
Can CBG and CBD Motivate You to Workout? Yes, but…..
*Image Credit: VIVOBAREFOOT
Working out is essential to overall good health and while some find it easy to jump out of bed and rip off a 10k before breakfast, in the cold, rain or snow. They are those workout warrior people you mingle with at parties who are always like, “oh, we just got home from a triathlon in Bend where I took 4th in my age group and John finished 4th overall! It was destiny, you know?”
Then there are those of us who slump out of our beds, hand outstretched for that warm cup of Joe to replace the warm, cozy blankets that were just minutes ago coaxing you back to sleep. Back to dreams of sailing distant lands and engaging in faraway concepts in defiance of that damn alarm that will wake you back up again, in exactly 9 minutes. Those 9 nine minutes are so good though; the best sleep of the night for sure. If only every time your head hit the pillow every second of sleep felt just like those 9 minutes of snooze. You’d be cheery and motivated all the time, right?
I digress. The motivation to workout for the slumpy, sleepy crowd of which I am a key member, is just not usually there. Sometimes it takes a friend or a substance to get my feet moving. Once they are going, we are all good. Great, in fact. But the impetus is the conundrum. So I talked to a friend at Canna West and she suggested I give some CBG oil a try that her customers are raving about. Surely by now you have heard of CBG? I wrote about the wonders of smoking CBG only flower last spring, but for this test I tried a tincture that is a 1:1 CBG to CBD mix from CBDistillery. You can find it at the Canna West Culture Shop.
For dosing, you simply take a dropper of the tincture, hold it under your tongue for 50 seconds and then swallow it. Granted, I didn’t love the taste and don’t really love the taste of any tinctures. I put that out of my mind by chasing it with a blueberry smoothie. Then I headed for the trailhead.
It was one of those sort of snowy and slushy days so I was hoping for some snow on the trail. I didn’t get that, but I also didn’t care. I was just happy to be walking and moving uphill so fast compared to my last hike, during which I was SLUGgish.
Strange, but I felt a tiny buzz from this tincture just like I did when I previously smoked the CBG flower. There is zero THC content in CBG, but I actually got a buzz off this 1:1 that was so simple and uplifting that I soon found myself skipping down some single track. Before long it got too steep to skip, and so I started making jump turns, as if I had skis on my feet. I was also singing along to the song rocking my Amazon playlist at the moment, Twisted Sisters’ I Wanna Rock. You might have forgotten how good that song really was, so I’ve dropped a YouTube video below for your headbanging pleasure. Turn the power up.
In my opinion, CBG is a motivator, but it is more of a people pleaser. If you need some extra motivation to work out like I do, CBG might also get your feet moving like it did mine. If you need an extra boost and are over 40 you could try an additional supplement I’m hooked on – Bulletproof Energy Collagen Protein Powder, which is packed with ginseng, cordyceps mushroom, magnesium and MCT oil. Once I started adding it to my smoothies I stopped drinking that morning coffee or chai. After introducing the tincture to the smoothie session I was wired, but not in a shaky manner like I get from caffeine. I was focused, present and happy.
I have not found CBD to be a motivational substance. It definitely dulls the edge in my case, especially during pressure packed situations. In fact, I stop caring about stuff after ingesting CBD. That being said, CBD is real pain relief. Combining it with CBG was interesting to me, because at least in the case of the product I tried, I received the benefits of both without getting any of the negatives of either. I haven’t found a negative related to CBG yet, but the CBD in the tincture I tested didn’t give me any of that, ‘I don’t care’ feeling. Rather, I was fired up for that hike and made it quickly and pain free to the ‘top of the rock’, Vashon Island’s highest point and part of the stunning Maury Island Marine Park nature area.
Minus the smoothie and minus the tincture, I’m not getting to that point that easily, as much as I hate to admit it. I might have not even left the house.
My recipe for focused energy is now thus: CBG + mct oil + ginseng
My healing recipe now includes the CBD + collagen protein + cordyceps mushroom
And I get it all from a dropper of oil and a smoothie. I am the farthest thing from a doctor, so I don’t know what magnesium does, nor can I make any medical claims here. How cannabinoids, collagen and MCT oil affects you might be completely different from how those things affect me, and so personal experimentation is key here in finding out what works best for you. My body type simply responds to CBG in a very happy manner, along with everything else in the recipe above. I’m not jumping out of bed to run a 10k, but close.
There’s no shame in supplementing your motivation with healthy, cannabinoid-based choices like CBG and CBD in order to achieve a higher level of health or to reduce pain. Supplementing your workouts with THC? That’s a whole other blog post in itself…
