tags:
San Francisco, CA, United States |
the 420 games |tgr news |snowbomb |san francisco |ricky williams |power plant fitness |marijuana |jim mcalpine |flow state |fitness |cannabis
Jim McAlpine and former NFL players Ricky Williams and Boo Williams support cannabis-using athletes at a 420 Games race. The 420 Games photo.
You know that awkward moment at Thanksgiving when it’s your turn to give thanks and you can’t think of anything but cornbread and you’re getting all sweaty-palmed trying to come up with something deep and then you’re like, “I’m just thankful for being #blessed?" Panic not this year: Jim McApline’s got your back.
In November, McAlpine–founder of Bay Area-based SnowBomb–and Heisman Trophy winner and NFL standout Ricky Williams are opening the world’s first cannabis gym–where you can smoke weed while you work out–in San Francisco. Now that’s something to be thankful for.
Go ahead and pick your jaw up off the floor. I ain’t lying. Power Plant Fitness will allow members to consume cannabis while working out. But don’t get carried away; this is no place to just be a stoner, and not only because McApline resents the name, deeming it derogatory. McAlpine and Williams are serious about the working out part.
RELATED: Why a surfing banker jumped two feet first into the weed business
They’re over the propaganda that marijuana and athletics don’t mix. Their mission, instead, is to de-stigmatize cannabis use in a manner that breeds respect, and to show that marijuana users are also high athletic performers. The two are not mutually exclusive.
McApline and Williams’s cannabis gym is going to be as game-changing as stuffed crust pizza. Members’ fitness is going to improve tenfold, as is their stoke to work out. Power Plant Fitness wasn’t a random brah-dig-this idea; the gym’s basis is rooted in science and decades of personal experience.
During his 11 years as an NFL running back, Williams used cannabis to handle the job’s excessive wear and tear. But (and that’s a big but), cannabis is a banned substance in the NFL even though (and that’s a big "even though") it’s legal in two dozen states, plus Washington, D.C.
McAlpine relishes in the fact that "skiing and cannabis go together like peanut butter and jelly," and he's trying to spread that (pun intended) to the gym. The 420 Games photo.
Williams walked away from his multi-million dollar gig as a professional athlete because he didn’t like the NFL’s cannabis policy. He didn’t like that he couldn’t take care of himself how he felt best. Doctors tried to do their thing with physical adjustments and anti-inflammatories, but nothing helped Williams like marijuana.
Since retiring from professional football after the 2011 season, Williams has been dedicated to exonerating cannabis. And this is exactly how he met McApline. Williams began partaking in The 420 Games, an organization spearheaded by McAlpine to reeducate the mislead who think cannabis users are lazy lumps, and it was during one race in LA that the two met, chatted about their passion to better integrate cannabis in our rapidly approaching post-prohibition society, and decided to team up on Power Plant Fitness. McAlpine was only three sentences into giving Williams the lowdown on his gym idea when Williams cracked a smile and said he wanted in.
McAlpine’s been chipping away at misconceptions that marijuana’s a crime since he started using it as a workout supplement at 18, and he just keeps gaining momentum. When the drought took a toll on the California ski scene and SnowBomb, the company McAlpine founded in 1997 that sources ski and boarding deals for members, he and his weed went to Tahoe on what he told his supportive wife was a “vision quest.”
While taking bong hits in his cabin, McAlpine turned on VICE, and the subject at hand serendipitously concerned ripe opportunities in the marijuana industry.
From a friendly running race to The Today Show, Power Plant Fitness is already going places. The 420 Games photo.
Not a grower, McAlpine looked at how else he could break into the industry. He brainstormed, and he brainstormed hard, eventually deducing that there was probably something in the fact that he loved skiing and loved cannabis. He says, “Skiing is an awesome, artistic show of athleticism, and it goes together with marijuana so amazingly…It’s all about that ‘flow state.’”
Ultimately, it’s the flow state that’s the root of his venture. He wants the same therapeutic harmony to extend beyond skiing and snowboarding. He wants the flow state in everyday fitness.
Power Plant Fitness will be a 6,000 square-foot gym in the heart of San Francisco, and, like The 420 Games, it’s sure to become a national phenomenon. “It won’t be a place to get high and screw around,” McAlpine says, “We’re focused on the athletic side, not the cannabis.”
Members will undergo a performance assessment to help them foster good gym habits. Trained professionals will get your benchmark athletic performance, and then, using a bunch of charts and graphs, they’ll determine how you specifically can best use cannabis to perform.
If you lose motor skills after consuming marijuana, you’ll be advised to hold back until after working out, but if a bite of a little something something with THC gives you the boost you need to complete a circuit, go for it!
Power Plant Fitness is launching the first ever line of cannabis edibles tailored for the athlete. The 420 Games photo.
Membership comes with a doctor’s recommendation for medical marijuana, after which point you'll have to pass a doctor's screening before getting your green card. And while you’ll be able to vaporize inside and smoke outside on the balconies, McAlpine’s most stoked about the gym’s line of hand-crafted edibles, all of which are athlete tested and approved, vegan, gluten-free, low-sugar, and help with pre-workout focus and post-workout recovery.
The edibles include apple granola and fruit leather. Heck, there’s even a blood orange and chia energy gel. All contain 5 mg of THC, and all are the world’s first athlete-focused cannabis snacks.
Evidence of medical marijuana’s athletic effectiveness is still a little sparse, but potential advantages are becoming increasingly clear. You can read a good article about all that here, but for one, it’s said to increase airflow to the lungs. That, or just get you psyched and ready to go. McAlpine himself is evidence enough that cannabis and laziness don’t equate; he ingests a dose of THC before swimming for over a mile in The Bay’s effing frigid waters.
McAlpine and Williams want to franchise Power Plant Fitness, taking it nationwide. They’re going all out, and quite rightly so; it’s time we toss old stereotypes out the window. San Francisco’s the perfect place to get started.