ONE OF THE biggest – and most controversial – dividing lines between Gen-Z gym-goers and their millennial and Gen-X counterparts is the use of phones in the gym. A fierce debate is currently raging online between trainees who use social media to share every detail of their workouts and those who firmly believe that even glancing at your phone in the gym is akin to a workout war crime. Until now, this has largely been a cultural divide, mostly boiling down to personal preference. But now scientists have chimed in with new research, which shows that using your phone ahead of your workout quite literally makes you weaker and decreases your performance.
The study
Participants in the study were brought into the gym and asked to perform a workout to failure. Two groups were formed: a neutral control group, who watched a documentary for 30 minutes prior to the workout, and a second group who were tasked with simply browsing social media for 30 minutes before hitting the weights.
All participants were experienced in strength training and tasked with performing three sets of squats, each set to failure, using around 80% of their 15RM, with 3 minutes of rest between sets.
The results
Despite seemingly inconsequential differences – after all, both groups were simply looking at a screen and passively consuming information – the social media group performed significantly worse than the documentary group, completing on average 15% less work and reporting a higher perception of mental fatigue during the test. All subjects were monitored for motivation levels, intra-set mechanical variables, and blood lactate levels, with no significant differences recorded between the groups. This led the researchers to conclude that the differences in performance were solely psychological, possibly due to increased mental fatigue from social media use.
What does this mean for us?
This research highlights that even if you’re firmly in the “no phones in the gym” camp, you may still be suffering from the brain-draining effects of social media, simply by scrolling through Instagram in the hour leading up to your workout.
Unfortunately, this study did not explore different timelines for social media usage before workouts to determine the optimal time to stop scrolling. However, based on this research, it would be wise to log off at least 30 minutes before your first lift if optimal performance is your goal.
It can also be inferred from these findings that the mental fatigue caused by the bombardment of attention-grabbing stimuli we encounter every time we log onto social media could be affecting our performance, both physically and mentally, in other areas of our lives. Therefore, limiting screen time before engaging in activities that require our full attention and energy is probably a good idea.
Is there a hashtag for that?
This article originally appeared on Men’s Health UK.
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Study Finds We Use Our Phones Everywhere, Even After Sex And On The Toilet
