Read the opposing argument from Loyal Homer.
With the World Cup just days away, England’s manager, Fabio Capello, has his team on a lovemaking lockdown. That’s right, in efforts to reduce distraction and exhaustion, Capello is limiting player visits with girlfriends and wives (and let’s be honest about it… mistresses too) to the night following matches with no overnight stays permitted. The coach has prohibited sex for the duration of the tournament.
To enforce the ban, Capello plans on observing the players sex lives, or lack thereof, via high-tech two way television sets in his players’ hotel rooms. Aside from ensuring that Big Ben Roethlisberger will never play soccer for the English, the policy will also provide the coach 24-hour access to his squad, and will assure him the best On Demand movie channels in the hotel.
I, for one, tip my cap to Mr. Capello. He is one of the few coaches that actually gets it -specifically by ensuring that the more his player don’t “get it”, the better they will play. Sure the room cameras may seem a little peeping tom-esque, but it is all in the name of winning for his country.
British sprinter Linford Christie stated that knocking boots (or in his case track shoes) took its toll on him. He described the side effects as making his legs feel like lead. The guy obviously must have been onto something because he was dominant on the track, where he won gold medals at the Olympics, World Championships, European Games, and Commonwealth Games. Muhammad Ali was known to abstain from sex six weeks before a fight, and I think it worked out pretty well for him. Seriously, would you want to climb into the ring with a mean Muhammad Ali who’s been sexually frustrated for more than a month?
In the movie Rocky, Rock’s trainer Mick gave him words to live by that ring especially true for this debate–“women weaken legs!” It’s true. I don’t care what the “research” says, fooling around before the big game is not a good idea. It is just something that a lot of guys have a gut feeling about, which has to count for something. Seriously, when else do you hear men voluntarily avoid sex? I do not think so many guys would support the notion if it did not have some validity. Ultimately, if it was good enough for Rocky Balboa, then its good enough for me.
Although I am sure my competitor for this debate, Loyal Homer, will try to argue that research is on his side, it really is not. The research supporting sex before a big game is ambiguous at best.
For the most part there was a general consensus that making the beast with two backs mere minutes or hours before a sporting event was a bad idea, but the issue became admittedly more debatable when the time frame was bumped back to the night before an event. But for every article I found which stated that pre-game sex held no negative side effects for athletes, there was usually a concession that abstinence also held benefits.
For example, a study which suggested that sex prior to sports could provide benefits by relaxing the participants also conceded the fact that abstinence could also help improve athletes’ focus. Similarly, the same study suggested that sex helped to fight muscle pain (specifically in women), but I also found counter arguments that strenuous positions during sex may actually strain muscles. I even found reports which contradicted the widely held notion that sex increased the amount of testosterone athletes produced, stating that there was no difference. So in the end, because the research tended to lean both ways, you have to go with your gut and I firmly believe that abstinence is the key.
One interesting thing that I learned while researching this debate is that there seems to be a lot of sex taking place at the Olympic Games. In fact Durex, the official condom provider of the Olympics (I promise I’m not making this up) actually keeps up with how many birth control devises they distribute. During the Sydney games the Cuban delegation burned through their allotment faster than any other country. They also finished 8th in the total medal count with only 29 total medals, less than a 1/3 of the medals won by the USA. So perhaps they could have benefited from a little bit of self restraint and abstinence.
Capello’s rule is not unheard of. In fact similar pleasure proliferations can be traced back to the ancient Olympic Games. Capello is just trying to ensure his team gets enough rest with as few distractions as possible. Athletes at this level should understand that they are going to lose some of their right of privacy due to the notoriety which comes from playing for the national team and all the drug screening they undergo. And as for having to keep their hands off of their women, it shouldn’t even be that big a deal for the English team. They should be used to keeping their hands to themselves, because it is not like they can use them in soccer anyways.
