We have heard about athletes using smelling salts as a stimulant. Some people also use them to counteract the effects of a concussion — which is a dangerous thing to do. What we haven’t heard of before is people smelling chocolate for a better workout.
Sniffing dark chocolate increased performance in strength training in a study. Exercises felt less hungry, less interested in eating, felt fuller and did more repetitions per set. Smelling milk chocolate made the exercising experience more pleasant.
“Exposing moderately trained men to chocolate odors right before and between sets of resistance exercise significantly increased their overall training volume without increasing their perceived exertion,” said senior author Dr. Mohamed Nashrudin bin Naharudin, an assistant professor at the Faculty of Sports and Exercise Science at the Univ. of Malaya. “Seeing a substantial increase in repetitions without the athletes feeling like they were exerting themselves any harder is a fascinating psychobiological outcome.”
The small study had 23 moderately fit men smell water, liquefied milk chocolate that was 60 percent cocoa or liquefied dark chocolate that was 90 percent cocoa. The men hadn’t eaten in at least 10 hours. The men did resistance training in the form of leg extensions. Hunger, fullness, desire to eat and plans to eat soon were recorded before exercising. While exercising, after smelling the scent, hunger and desire to eat were recorded.
Both types of chocolate impacted the men, but in different ways. The men who sniffed dark chocolate were less hungry and less interested in food. The men who smelled milk chocolate enjoyed the scent more but were no less hungry. Men who smelled dark chocolate averaged about 18 more repetitions in their workouts. The milk chocolate-smellers added around nine reps to their workouts.
Dr. Nashrudin bin Naharudin explained that the dark chocolate, with its rich bitterness, fools the brain into thinking the stomach is full. The milk chocolate smells sweet and decadent. It tricks people into thinking they are having a reward as they exercise. He said that the team doesn’t think the effects are exclusive to chocolate. However, a person would have to know the smells and find them appealing to trigger the reward centers of the brain to see the boosts in their performance.
In the future, this could help people train on an empty stomach. The men did leg extensions to the point of exhaustion, until they could not finish another set. The weight the men were lifting remained constant. Across the board, as they got more tired, the men rated the exercise more difficult on a scale of zero to 10. The chocolate made no difference in how hard they found it by the end.
Many people exercise before breakfast as part of a fasting routine or just because of their schedule. Exercising on an empty stomach is hard. Sometimes people don’t finish their routine when they are hungry. Smelling rich, bitter foods could be a way to increase the sense of being full and push through a workout without eating any calories.
The study was small, all men and all young adults performing one type of exercise. Hormones and brain activity weren’t monitored, so things were left up to personal interpretation. With more research, the subject should become clearer.
