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‘Apologies to those who like their gyms silent and tranquil …’ Photograph:
Westend61/Getty Images
View image in fullscreen
‘Apologies to those who like their gyms silent and tranquil …’ Photograph:
Westend61/Getty Images
Fitness



GRUNTING AND SWEARING MAKE YOU A GYM PARIAH – BUT CAN THEY IMPROVE PERFORMANCE?

Some gyms sound an alarm when anyone using weights gets a little too loud. So
what’s the science behind this sound and fury?


Joel Snape
Mon 12 Aug 2024 05.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 12 Aug 2024 12.54 EDT
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211
211

I have a confession to make: I am a gym grunter. Not all the time and certainly
not on every exercise, but here and there, when the weights feel heavy, it just
… helps? A sharp little exhale, a vocalisation of effort, maybe even a muttered
“yup” as a barbell ascends. I’m not bellowing “Arnold!” on every movement, but I
can get a bit noisy.

Is this so wrong? It depends who you ask. A recent study of more than 300 UK
residents found that male grunting “diminishes perceptions of masculinity and
both physical and social attractiveness” – though it does also, apparently,
“enhance perceptions of social dominance”, which for some men is probably part
of the point. Famously, US gym chain Planet Fitness has its own “lunk alarm”, a
siren that can be activated when lifters get too loud, triggering a staff
intervention. “Yesterday: me doing barbell stuff, which was hard,” journalist
and writer Rose George recently tweeted. “I did it quietly. Next to me, two
young men doing free weights, not too heavy. Grunt, huff, puff, grunt, huff.
Why?”



Well, first of all, apologies to those who like their gyms silent and tranquil –
but yes, it can improve performance. About a decade ago, a pair of studies found
that grunting increased force production in athletes squeezing a hand-gripper
and performing tennis shots, the latter finding that performance was
“significantly enhanced”. More recently, a study of 20 mixed martial artists
confirmed that grunting also seems to improve kicking power, though it’s
interesting to note that a smaller, older study found no correlation between
grunting and lifting heavy barbells off the floor. A bit of well-placed
profanity might also work: a study published in the journal Psychology of Sports
and Exercise found that athletes who swore during cycling and handgrip tests
experienced significant increases in power and strength compared with those who
used neutral words.

> My wife wandered across the gym floor to ask me why I sounded like a wounded
> buffalo

Bearing all this in mind, an obvious question is: why does it work? One possible
explanation is that grunting triggers the body’s autonomic nervous system,
responsible for the fight-flight-freeze response that primes us for physical
action (though it’s important to note that the swearing study ruled this out). A
little expression of exertion – or maybe a full-bore yelp – might simply let
your body know that it’s OK to take the brakes off and try really hard, though
it’s far from proven that this is what’s happening.

Another possibility is that it can sometimes be reflective of good lifting
technique. There are two schools of thought about what to do when you start
lifting stuff that’s heavy: you can either exhale during the strenuous bit
(sensible if you’re doing a lot of repetitions), or hold your breath (helpful if
you’re doing one or two very heavy moves). The second is known as the Valsalva
manoeuvre, and can help you lift more weight by “bracing” the muscles around
your midsection before they are more stable. It also sometimes causes a bit of a
racket: once, I was doing this to haul a very heavy hex bar off the floor, and
my wife wandered across the gym floor to ask me why I sounded like a wounded
buffalo (I, completely oblivious, had my headphones on).

View image in fullscreen
‘Why does it work? One possible explanation is that grunting triggers the body’s
autonomic nervous system.’ Photograph: Andersen Ross/Getty Images


To be extremely charitable, there might also be one more reason why young men
tend to grunt more than everyone else: the type of training they do hurts more.
Traditionally, it has been thought that training to “failure” (for instance,
doing curls until your arms simply won’t lift the weight) is the best way to
build bigger muscles – and though a recent meta-analysis was pretty inconclusive
on that point, training to failure certainly hurts. By contrast, “failing” when
you’re trying to build strength is usually pretty counter-productive: you’re
trying to teach your muscle fibres to fire together, rather than making them
bigger. In other words: if you’re training for bigger biceps, that training
might be pretty unpleasant, but if you’re just trying to make your biceps
stronger, it doesn’t have to be horrible.

The dead hang delight: how this quick, surprisingly simple exercise can change
your life
Read more

So where does all this leave us? Well, just like being in the quiet coach, it’s
really a question of operating within the spirit of the rules, and not spoiling
things for everyone else. In an ideal world, everyone would grunt exactly as
much as they need to get the most from their training – no more, no less – and
we’d have no need for lunk alarms, sternly worded chalkboards or disapproving
glances. As a rule of thumb, maybe we should treat grunts like writer Elmore
Leonard treats exclamation marks – one or two per workout is fine; anything else
is overkill. Oh, and if you really want to try yelling out the Governator’s name
during your shoulder presses, give it a go. Just don’t blame me if you end up on
TikTok.

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