Gym Rats Are Also Incredible Barflies

There are countless bad drinking-as-a-workout jokes. For instance:

• “My head says gym, but my heart says beer.”
• “Of course I work out, I lift beer all the time.”
• “My workout routine consists of sweating out alcohol so I can go drink again.”
• “Never skip keg day.”

And those are just the ones that have been put on T-shirts. 

The thing is, though, the symbiotic relationship between drinking and working out extends far beyond hacky puns. In fact, new research has found that men and women who hit the gym hard tend to guzzle down beer, wine and other booze with a comparable fervor. 

The researchers behind this new study took a deep-dive into data from 38,653 healthy patients who had preventive-care examinations between 1988 and 2019 and were enrolled in the Cooper Center Longitudinal Study. Their cardiorespiratory fitness levels were tracked via treadmill, and alcohol consumption was self-reported. The researchers’ conclusion was as simple as it was blunt: “Higher fitness levels are significantly related to greater alcohol consumption among a large cohort of adult patients.” 

For what it’s worth, other studies have demonstrated a correlation between exercise addiction and drug and alcohol addiction. Which, also not great. 

And so, it would seem as though there’s a new form of double-fisting at play here: A bottle in one hand, a dumbbell in the other.