Swearing May Help You Increase Strength
According to a study published in March 2018 in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise, swearing may increase your strength and power. Researchers conducted two tests: an anaerobic exercise using a resistance bike and an isometric handgrip exercise. Participants showed a 4 percent increase in power in the first five seconds on the bike and a 2 percent increase across the full 30-second test while swearing. In the handgrip test, they demonstrated a grip that was about 8 percent stronger while swearing. While the study authors did find that swearing increases strength, they didn’t find out exactly why. “We hypothesized that it would be a response by the sympathetic drive — the part of your body that raises your blood pressure and heart rate and controls your fight-or-flight response — but we actually didn’t find that,” says researcher David Spierer, EdD, professor of Athletic Training, Health, and Exercise Science at Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York, who worked on the study with lead researcher Richard Stephens, PhD, a senior lecturer in psychology at Keele University in the United Kingdom. Instead, Dr. Spierer suggests that swearing is disinhibiting, and helps distract you from pain. “Cursing is thought of as taboo,” he says, “and when you’re no longer inhibited from hearing or saying the word, that causes the distraction.” It could also trigger the amygdala, the part of the brain that’s responsible for emotions, he says: “When you curse, there could be agitation or an adrenaline surge that causes a change in force.” Spierer and Dr. Stephens are currently working on a new study measuring the effects that swearing may have on more common gym exercises, like wall sits, push-ups, and planks.
Swearing May Help With Pain Management
Those who say “no pain, no gain” in the gym aren’t wrong — exercise is a physical stressor, and challenging yourself doesn’t always feel good. According to earlier research also led by Stephens, published in the journal NeuroReport, cursing when the going gets tough might help you tolerate such discomfort. In the study, Stephens and colleagues measured how long people could keep their hands immersed in cold water. When the participants were allowed to repeat a curse word of their choice versus a neutral word (one that could be used to describe a table, for example), they were able endure the cold about 50 percent longer, and reported less pain throughout. Swearing also caused the participants’ heart rates to rise. “The rise in heart rate indicates that the body may be entering the fight-or-flight response, a state of raised autonomic nervous system activity,” says Stephens. “There is an aspect of the fight-or-flight response known as ‘stress-induced analgesia,’ which is a naturally occurring pain-relief mechanism. We think that people use swearing to access this natural pain relief.”
Swearing May Help You Feel Less Stressed
Sixty-three percent of Americans use cursing to deal with stress, according to a 2018 survey of 2,000 people by 9Round Kickbox Fitness. The physical stress of exercise is not quite the same as the mental stress of a tough day at work, but “swearing has some kind of analgesic, or pain-relieving, effect that may lessen or dampen the amount of stress your body or brain is receiving,” says Spierer, who was not involved in the survey. “Whatever it is you’re doing when you swear, swearing is going to distract you so you’re no longer focused on that stress," he explains. There’s also the cathartic element of cursing. In a study published in the journal , researchers found that 16 percent of participants recalled experiencing relief after cursing in their youth in front of an adult. “The catharsis theory is somewhat controversial,” says study author Timothy Jay, PhD, a psychologist and professor emeritus at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams and the author of Cursing in America and Why We Curse. “I believe that people who swear out of frustration feel better. But other people would argue that it could make things worse — that doing something aggressive makes you feel more aggressive.” In the study of more than 200 college students, 19 percent recalled feeling angry or frustrated after they cursed, and 21 percent recalled feeling embarrassed. Really, it depends on your personality and your physiology, Dr. Jay explains.
Will Swearing Really Boost Your Workout?
While cursing can be an aggressive reflex, it can have a positive effect on you in a physical sense, says Jay. Think of tennis players who grunt when they serve. “They’re using their core and exhaling to increase muscle strength; a well-timed expletive could have a similar effect," he explains. Here’s the bad news: Shouting expletives on the elliptical isn’t going to make a huge difference for the average person. “For elite athletes, the difference at the top of the pyramid is minute, and even 2 percent can make a difference between first and second place,” says Jay. “But for most of us amateurs, we’re not going to notice a 2 to 4 or even 8 percent increase.” And cursing isn’t likely to give you a performance edge when it comes to slower or less intense workouts. “I don’t think it will help if you’re on the treadmill and you’re running at a moderate pace, throwing f-bombs around every three seconds,” says Spierer. “That’s not really what we found.” But when you’re really pushing yourself, swearing might make a difference. “If you’re doing things that require higher intensities, things that are anaerobic, whether it be repeat sprints or rope climbing or bench-pressing a very heavy weight, then, yes, I do think it will help,” he says. “That distraction from what you’re doing will help you get through that physical stress or pain.” That said, how you curse matters. It wasn’t off-the-cuff swearing and yelling that did the trick in any of the studies, Spierer explains. “It’s about the cadence of the swearing,” he says. “We basically had participants swear every three seconds using the word they would personally say if they smashed themselves in the thumb with a hammer or got up quickly and hit their head on a cabinet.” And remember: It’s not about just randomly screaming swear words. “That might distract you during the time you’re screaming those profanities, for a couple of seconds or so, but if you do it methodically, just loud enough for you to hear yourself, every few seconds, that’s going to be more distracting,” says Spierer. It also depends on how frequently you swear in your day-to-day life. “If you do it all the time, you’re not going to have the same effect as somebody who hasn’t worn out that mechanism,” says Jay. “As with any emotion, you tend to become desensitized and you exhaust the effect.”
