From the Vancouver Sun, published Thursday, November 15, 2007

Lifting, crunching, straining and sweating are okay, but some people draw the line at grunting while lifting weights at the gym.

“I just don’t think it’s necessary,” says Kelvin Smith, who is a regular at his local gym. “I don’t think it makes a difference with being able to lift more. I think people do it for effect, and I find it very annoying, absolutely, because it’s phoney.”

Bodybuilder Ryan Cherwoniak is a grunter and says it’s a natural thing to do when you’re exerting yourself to the max.

“It’s the body’s oomph at the end. And, a lot of it is a man thing, the animal in him,” Cherwoniak says.For the most part, grunters and the silent majority peacefully coexist in the gym, although there was a corrections officer who was kicked out of Planet Fitness in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., last year after violating its strict no-grunting policy.

Grunting regularly makes the top 10 list of things people hate about the gym. Mike Coughlin, a personal trainer, is occasionally asked by clients if there’s anything he can do to silence a loud lifter. He says there are three reasons why people grunt when they lift: they’re either lifting too much weight, trying to attract attention, or they think it’s acceptable behaviour.

“I make noise, absolutely,” Coughlin says. “But I take into consideration there are other people working out with me.”

THE GRUNTING DEBATE

Fans of the grunt says it helps them lift more weight. But a study out of Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Tex., that compared football players who grunted while lifting deadweights with a group of graduate students who were untrained lifters and did not grunt, found the first group increased their lifts by two per cent and the second group by five per cent.

Researchers concluded grunting does not provide an overall boost to an individual’s performance.

Dan Syrotiuk, an exercise physiology professor and vice dean of physical education and recreation at the University of Alberta, says there’s a physiological phenomenon called the Valsalva manoeuvre that occurs when people exert themselves. When you push a car that’s out of gas or stuck in the snow, when you push out a baby during childbirth, have a bowel movement or you push weights, there’s a momentary holding of breath that helps to stabilize the torso, particularly the spine, he says.

It’s a protective mechanism, a safety mechanism. Usually, at the end of the exertion, there is a rush of pent up air that can be audible.

A little Valsalva is okay, but holding your breath for too long can be hazardous to your health because it deprives the body, specifically the brain and the heart, of oxygen, Syrotiuk says.

People who lift weights sometimes get a glimpse of this after holding their breath through 10 repetitions of an exercise such as a leg press, and report seeing stars because they’re a little oxygen-starved.

There’s a great debate about whether people should even be temporarily holding their breaths, Syrotiuk says, but research has disproved that holding your breath while lifting weights causes aneurisms, strokes or brain hemorrhages.

TRY HISSING

Still, you might be better off hissing when exerting yourself, the way some martial arts students do.

The karate equivalent of the grunt is a yell in Japanese known as the kiai (pronounced key-eye), says karate instructor, or sensei, Neil Dunnigan.

The hissing is the sound of air passing between the tongue and the teeth while releasing a fast burst of energy, making a strike. Its main purpose is to centre power in the lower belly, but it’s also used to scare or break the spirit of an opponent, Dunnigan says. It’s better than a grunt because you continue to breathe while you exert yourself so your body is never deprived of oxygen.

COULD BE WORSE …

As one non-grunting gym user, Wayne Davidson, observes, grunting is a motivation lifters believe gives them an extra boost at the height of exertion.

There are a lot more annoying things people do in the gym, Davidson says, like leaving behind their weight plates on machines for other people to have to unload before doing their own workout.

Or, as Kim Zimmerman, another non-grunter, observes: if people find grunting in the gym annoying, it means they’re paying too much attention to everyone else and not working hard enough themselves.