Sniffing chocolate when working out at the gym could help boost your performance, research suggests
Forget protein shakes and pre-workout powders, the secret to smashing your next gym session might already be sitting in your kitchen cupboard.
New research suggests a quick sniff of chocolate before hitting the weights could dramatically improve performance, and you don't even need to eat any of it.
Sports scientists in Malaysia set out to explore how smell, appetite and exercise capacity interact, an area researcher Mohamed Nashrudin bin Naharudin said had never been 'systematically' studied before, despite scientists knowing how powerfully connected the sense of smell is to the brain's appetite and emotion centres.
To test the theory, the team recruited 23 young men in their early-to-mid twenties and had them come into the lab early in the morning, before they'd eaten anything.
Advert
The men were split into three groups. One was given liquid dark chocolate containing 90 percent cocoa to smell, another was handed milk chocolate with 60 percent cocoa, and the final group was simply given water.
Each participant then carried out a set of leg extensions, sitting in a machine and lifting a weighted bar with their shins.
Does smelling chocolate before a workout improve performance?
The results were striking. Men who sniffed the dark chocolate managed to squeeze out 18 extra reps compared to the water group, while those who caught a whiff of milk chocolate still managed nine more reps.
What's more, despite pushing out significantly more reps, the men didn't report feeling like they'd worked any harder for it, something Nashrudin Naharudin called "a fascinating psychobiological outcome."
The dark chocolate group also reported feeling less hungry, fuller, and less interested in eating afterwards, whereas the milk chocolate, despite smelling more pleasant to participants, had no real effect on their appetite.
Why does sniffing food reduce hunger during exercise?
Researchers believe the effect comes down to the brain associating the rich, bitter smell of dark chocolate with a genuinely filling food, essentially tricking the body into feeling like it's already eaten.
The theory is that simply smelling food might be enough to kickstart the digestive process in anticipation of a meal, mimicking some of the effects of actually eating it, and the team suspect the trick isn't necessarily unique to chocolate.
Nashrudin Naharudin explained a food's smell likely needs to be familiar and appealing to a person, or at least not off-putting, in order to trigger the same appetite-shifting effect and unlock any performance gains.
The findings could be a game-changer for the huge number of people who train on an empty stomach.
Research suggests as many as 38 percent of athletes choose to work out before eating anything, believing it benefits their performance and body composition, while others follow intermittent fasting schedules that rule out food before a session.
For anyone who wants to feel fuelled without the discomfort of a full stomach mid-workout, a quick sniff of chocolate before stepping onto the gym floor could be a simple trick worth trying.
Thomas Bamford