Hey T-folk. When I’m doing legs, I tend to get quite noisy, simply 'cos I’m busting my @ss. I believe it actually helps, or at least the exhaling on the concentric phase helps with the lift. Sometime I think - f#ck, someone’s gunna tell me to shut the hell up soon - but in the end I figure screw them, I’m lifting how I want to, they can deal. How vocal are the rest of you? Does it bother you that you can hear some people across the room? Curious…
It doesn’t bother me personally but it does bother most people and probably is not really necessary. I think most people in the gym think of it as an attention getting gimmick rather than a lifting aid. It seems to particularly bother the female population.
i am the sielent type, but it doesn’t really bother me when people scream doing squats or deadlifts and what not, sometimes it motives me, but when someone screams while doin BB curls (these are teh same people that go in the squat rack and use so much body language it because a lower back movement) or leg extensions i just wonder what they are doing in the gym.
I also get a little noisy when I’m lifting. Nothing to loud just some grunts here and there to finsh of the set. I really don’t mind when people yell, it blocks out the fucking pop music they play over the speakers.
I pick a point in front of me and i stare at it, dont let anything else bother me. Then When I’m doing the concentric portion I growl so loud I sound like im in a Death metal band.
It doesn’t bother me the slightest but I lift in a bodybuilder/powerlifter type gym. It’s pretty hardcore so its expected. If I am at my college gym then that is a different story. The only time I yell or grunt is doing max attempts of 3 reps or less.
Yea…it’s a little irritating…even the “grunts and growls”, by especailly the female tennis players (with each serve and return), can be a little irritating! (like scatching a blackboard?)
Even when you look at the Pro’s on their tapes, they are doing very little yelling and howling.
I don’t yell…but whom am I to say if it help you, Mark? But chances are, you are irritating somebody…
There’s always going to be some sort of distraction in a place where a lot of different people get together. The point is if you can’t block them out and let them bother you, you should build your own gym at home. But maybe you will find the perfect gym one day, who knows.
Grunting and Yelling definitely helped me, but I dropped them out of courtesy to other gym patrons. I wasn’t a big deal working out at my college gym 'cause the only people it would bug were classmates/friends and being in an Exercise Science Program, most understood. Now that I work out in the gym I work at, I keep the grunts and yells to a minimum. So yeah, I imagine they are annoying to the average person.
A lot of it is dependent on the grunt or yell itself. As tough as a leg press is, I don’t need to hear someone grunt for 10 reps straight is a little annoying. But a yell while pounding out a triple or 1 RM, I can deal.
It all depends where i’m lifting. I play football for my high school, and the school’s weight room is the team’s second home. Being able to hear grunts, screams, and plates/bars crashing from the lower levels of the building and the courtyard is just part of it’s mystique. In the winter months we guage the intensity of the lift by how foggy the windows are afterwords (The weight room isn’t heated 
Of course i don’t train exclusively in a hardcore weight room. I have a membership to a chromes’n’ferns gym, and it tends to piss me off there. When guys are doing super-fast, spastic, 45lbs-on-a-side, leg presses and making sexual moans it gets on my nerves. I don’t give a damn what the rest of the gym does, but it pisses me off when they try their best to draw attention to themselves. It’s very hard to squat while laughing.
Grunts don’t really bother me. However, if they are done while doing partials . . .
If it is a natural by-product of your intensity, that is not an annoyance. I tend to grunt a little, especially on leg day. What is hightly irritating is when it is obvious that the screaming is purely for show. There are two wannabes in my gym who walk around the bench and grunt before every set, and then proceed to scream as if they are in labor while performing their reps. These guys have no physiques whatsoever and don’t even use respectable weights. That is the point where is crosses the line from tolerable and even mildly motivating to outright obnoxious and annoying.
It does not bother me, as long as the weight you are moving is worth grunting about. I think of it as a yell, like in karate. Most of the grunters I see are being outlifted by my girl.
I find it irritating and believe it just proves you’ve got a good set of vocal chords. AND I also believe that the guys (and gals) that grunt and grown to extremes are paying MORE attention to the grunting and growing rather than to the actual work they are attempting to perform. BTW: I do lift heavier than most of the guys in our gym that tend to the louds grunts -but I’m concentrating so much on my form and the task at hand, I’ve got nothing to “grunt”.
Grunting and groaning on a reallly heavy, intense set, does’nt bother me, but yelling or screaming is totally unnecessary. The guys who scream and yell are simply the guys looking for attention. I watched a 227lb. natural guy bench 500lbs a couple weeks ago. He did’nt grunt, groan or make any noise at all. He was not looking to attract any attention what so ever. However the impressive lift attracted attention anyhow. There are lots of guys in the gym bigger and more muscular than this guy, but none stronger. Yelling and screaming ranks up their with dropping your dumbbells on the floor after a heavy set of presses. If you can’t put the weights down quietly than they are too heavy for you. Again, it’s just an attention getter.
It’s annoying. Everytime I hear someone yell/grunt/etc it’s one of those cheesy guys who think there are lifting ‘heavy’ and that the weight they are using will impress someone. The truth is that the weight they are lifting isnt impressive. Elite athletes lift way more then you and they dont make a noise. If you make those noises because it ‘hurts’, suck it in and be a man. In other words “show me the baby, dont show me the pain”.
I train in a great gym … in Japan. In Japan, as you may know, people are generally far more polite than they are in other countries. This means that if someone is pissing them off, they usually won’t say anything about it. (This is sometimes carried to what to me are ridiculous levels, but hey, it’s the culture here.)
Anyway, sometimes we get people yelling and screaming in the gym. I have to say that, as a basic rule, yes, it does piss me off. Why? Because usually the guys doing it are newbies with no development who don’t have anywhere near the time in to really make themselves hurt under the iron (so they’re just wanking). Either that, or else it’s someone who IS actually pretty well developed but is doing an idiotic exercise like 1/8cm leg press with 8000kgs and four spotters. (Again, wanking.)
I’ve trained with guys who are intense enough to become world-ranked powerlifters, and they didn’t scream or yell much. Personally, I don’t think it’s necessary.
i usually will throw out a couple of grunts. nothing too bad. i do it with everything though. softball, flips, stunts, jumping, etc.
I think it’s true that it’s dependent on the actual lift you are doing. I’ve never actually growled during a bench press or any other lift. But when doing squats I always growl, I keep my abs in tension and when doing the concentric i release the air keeping everything tense ending up with a growl… Now it may sound brutal but it’s not very loud that everyone in the gym can hear it. That’s a little too extremist. But it definitely does help… there’s different techniques different people use to help them focus mentally and kill a lift and that’s just one of mine.
Well, I’ll start by saying that I don’t make noise when I lift, out of coutesy to my wife and daughter that are generally asleep when I lift (I lift at home). However, when I DO lift at a gym, the grunts don’t bother me. But the screams do. Showmanship in my book – I just laugh. But what DOES get my attention is the staccato “dut” at the start of a rep, followed by the drawn out “DAHHHHHH!” at the end (listen at a powerlifting meet). That’s usually the signal of some one who’s doing an impressive lift, and I want to witness that. THAT’S a big psych-up for me.