Grunting in the Gym: Good, Bad, or Just Loud?

by Lou Schuler on Oct 25, 2007 9:06 AM EDT in News Comment 4 comments

You probably remember Gruntgate, the story about the cop who got kicked out of a Planet Fitness gym in New York last year because he made too much noise when he lifted. (I wrote about it several times on the original MPF; this post kind of sums everything up.)

There's no reason to bring it up again, but HealthDay reporter E.J. Mundell decided to anyway. He found one expert on each side. Here's the pro-grunt position:

Dennis O'Connell is a certified strength and conditioning specialist and professor and chairman of physical therapy at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. He has led two studies assessing grunting's ability to maximize exercise output.

During the research, O'Connell had a variety of people lift a heavy dead weight and pull that weight upward until they straightened their bodies into an upright position. [Otherwise known as a deadlift.] Participants were told to either grunt or stay quiet during the lift.

"Very experienced lifters that normally grunted when they lifted did have about a 1 percent improvement with grunting," O'Connell said.

That pattern was repeated with the other lifters who grunted, he added. "A group of college football players -- they, of course, also lifted weights fairly regularly -- showed a 2 percent improvement. And the untrained group -- graduate students in physical therapy -- had about a 5 percent increase," he said.

When these improvements were spread across the total group, they did not reach statistical significance, O'Connell noted, so there's no firm conclusion that grunting will always boost a gym-goer's performance.

"But, for some people, there was actually a small percentage increase when they grunted, in terms of the force produced," O'Connell said. For that reason, "I wouldn't be trying to tell people not to grunt," he said.

Now we hear from the anti-grunt faction:

Belisa Vranich, a sports psychologist for Gold's Gym Fitness in New York City, believes that for the average workout fan, grunting is probably unnecessary.

"Some people grunt to give others the impression that [the grunters] are doing a lot of work. It's just like flexing and strutting, trying to attract attention," she told the Orange County Register. "The other reason is a more physical one -- they're not breathing properly. In order to grunt, they have to hold their breath and exhale forcefully."

Wouldn't it be fun to see Ms. Vranich at a powerlifting meet, trying to explain to the lifters how to breathe properly? Because, you know, they aren't holding their breath and then exhaling forcefully for any physiological reason; they're just doing it as a display of dominance.

(In fairness, she did say she was talking about "the average workout fan," whatever that may be.)

Anyway, all this gives me a chance to reminisce about the strangest noise I ever heard in a gym (not counting the cannon-shot gas expulsion I once released on the leg-press machine):

A woman at my health club in Southern California used to make orgasm noises when she lifted: "Oh! Oh! Oh!"

I don't think she had any idea that's what she was doing. For all I know, she may have had some kind of vocal tick that caused her to make climax sounds in the gym and deadlift grunts when she had an orgasm. ("Uhhhh ... Yeah! Personal record, baby!") Maybe she did baby talk to telemarketers and told her own children to piss off and not call her at home anymore. I don't know what her issue was, and it doesn't really matter, because when she was in the gym, every exercise she did sounded like an adult video.

It wasn't, however, as much fun as I just made it sound. Nothing ruins your focus like aural stimulation. Wood and iron just don't mix.

(Hat tip: Mike Navin and Shane Burgel.)

Thursday blog meat

Who would've guessed that schizophrenics identify with Larry David?
Here's something else I didn't know: Someone my size has about 12 pints of blood, but a morbidly obese person might have almost three times as much.

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Was she using a roman chair?

Apparently they have some effect.

http://www.t-nation.com/tmagnum/readTopic.do?id=1457656&pageNo=0

by bob on Oct 25, 2007 10:07 AM EDT reply actions

The Coregasm!

I forgot all about that!

One of the first times I heard the sex noises I looked over to see what she was doing. Swear to God, she was doing calf raises!

by Lou Schuler on Oct 25, 2007 10:19 AM EDT up reply actions

Calfgasm?

I have to admit, if I wasn't conditioned to work silently my lifting noises would probably be a little porno, too (not "oh! oh!"...but still)...In between swearing at the idiot who left the bar racked in the squat rack above my head and loaded with every 45lb plate in sight.

by kimuchi on Oct 25, 2007 4:26 PM EDT up reply actions