Morgan English was sitting on the fire escape in her Portland State University apartment, smoking weed, when she felt a pull toward a stationary bicycle.
[pause]
English owns and teaches classes for Stoned+Toned, a fitness company that blends cannabis and fitness in pursuit of community and a more pleasurable workout.
The Los Angeles-based company is among those betting big on the legal cannabis boom bringing fitness along. San Francisco is home to a "cannabis gym" that encourages visitors to light up and lift. A "Pelostoned" Facebook group has thousands of members who smoke cannabis and ride their stationary bikes.
Prerecorded classes, which range from yoga to Pilates to cycling, begin with an introduction: what the instructor is smoking, and why.
Instructors then take a hit of weed — hand-selected strains sold in local dispensaries paired with each class — and smoke on and off throughout the warmup.
The exercise, [English] said, isn't mandatory.
"If you want to lay on your mat or go grab a slice of pizza, you can do that."
"When I used cannabis in my workouts, I would find less inhibition to try something that looked really hard," Clark said. "There are some instructors that do a lot of squatting and a lot of leg-heavy movement, and without cannabis I might approach it like, 'That’s too hard, I can't do that.'"
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