Does a Ban on s*x Improve a Football Player’s Performance?
The Ghanaian football team has been banned from having s*x for the duration of their World Cup campaign. This very interesting yet odd story has come to light from an online article and it seems to be true. But there are several questions to be asked here: why would the Ghanaian team be banned from having s*x, how is the team management going to enforce the ban, and does not having s*x improve an athlete’s performance on the field?
It seems the Ghanaian football team management has some ideas about the correlation of s*x and football performance that makes them think that having s*x will decrease performance on the field. “Ghanaweb reports that a s*x ban has been imposed on the Ghana squad during the World Cup. It’s hard to know how this might affect things, nor how it might be enforced, but we must trust in the powers that be and assume they know their players,”. The same article says that this strategy allegedly worked for Switzerland in 1994 as well because they got very far in the tournament before being knocked out by a lucky Spanish side. What is interesting to note here is that no one on the Ghanaian management team attributed the winning streak of the Swiss side in the ‘94 World Cup to nothing more than good play and luck. Even though the Swiss team and their management denied the no s*x rumours, the story became legendary and may have inspired the current thinking from the African nation.
A simple way to look at this no s*x ban is to think about it logically. No s*x actually means no late nights and no parties for the footballers. If they indulge in revelry and have s*x till the wee hours of the morning, their performance will suffer the next day, as they might not make training the next day, or might show up half asleep. So why not just ban them from partying or going out late at night? That would have made more sense and would have been easier to enforce.
The management could just have locked the players in their rooms every night. Does the Ghanaian coach and team doctor know something about the physical makeup of the Ghanaians that are a mystery to the rest of the world?
A few athletes have been known to follow this myth of abstaining from s*x before a competition. Muhammad Ali was one such athlete who wouldn’t have s*x before a fight. If we look at an athlete’s physical makeup, would a reduction in s*x help or hinder their performance? Well, a website gives us that very answer, but it isn’t very conclusive. “Scientists say there is no physiological evidence to suggest that s*x before competition is bad. In fact, some studies suggest that pre-sports s*x may actually aid athletes by raising their testosterone levels, for example. Some scientists suggest that abstinence could help some athletes concentrate better,” This seems to suggest that at the end of the day, it depends on the particular athlete and his or her own mental and physical state at the time. If an athlete is prone to attacks of high sexual desire, maybe having s*x before a contest would aid them in lowering that desire. Others may need to abstain before a big contest to give their minds time to focus solely on that event and nothing else.
The odd thing about s*x though is if a person is getting it, they don’t think about it; it’s only when it isn’t a part of their lives that it consumes their thoughts. So maybe this ban wasn’t such a good idea for the Ghanaians after all.
Whatever the case may be, the Ghanaian coaches and team physiotherapists know their players better than we can ever even being to know them. If they think that a ban on s*x before the World Cup will enhance their chances of winning games, well, then they know what’s best. What happens though if all the teams in the contest follow the same no s*x rule or one team has a rule of s*x before every game? Imagine if that team won the contest, the next time a World Cup took place, every team would have a s*x-before-every-game policy. Maybe instead of worrying about s*x so much, they should get on with it and play the game.
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