Tal PELEG-SAGY The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness 2023 February;63(2):250-5
BACKGROUND: Current research suggests that pre-competition sexual intercourse does not influence athletes’ performance. Yet, high quality studies in this field are scarce.
METHODS: We aimed to investigate whether sexual activity negatively influences physiological performance. We conducted a prospective cross over study, which enrolled active players from the first team of a football club in the Israeli Football Premier League during the 2018-19 season. We gathered participants’ physiological performance using GPS driven data per match. In addition, we assessed sexual activity the night before using telephone interviews at the end of every match. We used a linear mixed models methodology, accounting for each player as a cluster.
RESULTS: We enrolled 14 participants who participated in 88 football matches. The mean age was 29.7 (±3.

CONCLUSIONS: To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to show that sexual intercourse the night before a football match may have a negative influence on players’ performance.