Swearing on training

If you’re looking for that extra edge that will allow you to lift one more rep or maintain your pace near the end of a tough workout, consider the latest
research from psychologist Richard Stephens of Keele University in Britain. After hitting his thumb with a hammer, Stephens let loose with a string
of expletives—a common enough occurrence, but one that left him wondering why humans have this nearly universal habit of “cathartic swearing.”
To find out, he asked 67 volunteers to dunk their hands in ice-cold water and keep them there for as long as possible. Half of them were told to yell
a word from their list of “five words you might use after hitting yourself on the thumb with a hammer,” while the other half chose a word from their list
of “five words to describe a table.” Sure enough, swearing significantly increased the length of time subjects could withstand the pain, by 30 percent
for men and 44 percent for women—a difference that may have something to do with the fact that women swear less often, Stephens speculates.
Swearing also raised heart rates and decreased perceived pain, again with a greater effect in women than men.
The results were actually the opposite of what Stephens expected. Pain theorists had believed that swearing was a form of “catastrophizing” or
exaggerating the severity of the pain, but Stephens’s results, which appeared in 2009 in the journal NeuroReport, suggest that something else is
happening. Instead, it may be that swearing triggers feelings of aggression that allow us to tap into our fight-or-flight mechanism, pumping
adrenaline through our veins and blocking pain. Similarly, Stephens points out, sports coaches often psych their players up with pre-game
speeches laden with profanity. Whatever the precise mechanism, the finding that swearing increases pain tolerance explains why evolution has
ensured that the behavior survives in virtually all cultures. Most language is generated in the left brain, but swearing appears to arise in the older
emotion centers of the right brain: the limbic system and the basal ganglia. So the next time you’re trying to get through the painful part of a race or
workout, remember that you have the code words to access this primitive part of your brain—as long as there aren’t any children within earshot.
(Strangely, this isn’t the only study to suggest that expressing your inner jerk can boost your physical performance. In 2010, Harvard University
psychologists reported that doing a good deed like giving money to charity, or even imagining doing a good deed, enabled volunteers to hold up a
five-pound weight for longer than they could when thinking neutral thoughts. But they gained even greater strength from imagining themselves doing
evil deeds like harming someone else—even without swearing!)