The notion that sex can hinder athletic performance has been around since at least the ancient Greeks. But new scientific research suggests there isn’t much truth to the idea, Details magazine reports.


For instance, a recent study of 14 married males, who underwent an athletic-performance test the morning after sex fared just as well as those who had a six-day period of abstinence beforehand.

Researchers gauged the men’s "grip strength, balance, lateral movement, reaction time, aerobic power, and VO2max (a measure of the maximum volume of oxygen an athlete consumes during exercise).”

A second study, based on a survey of 1,000 male and female runners by Brooks Running, found that 48 percent of respondents under 40 years old said that having sex before races actually helped their performance.