Name: Rage workouts.<\/p>\n
Age: Would this be a good time to invoke Aristotle\u2019s beliefs on catharsis?<\/p>\n
Appearance: Pumped-up, red-faced, veiny, on the brink of a disciplinary hearing.<\/p>\n
Is this about being angry at the gym? Because, this morning there was a guy just sitting, using his phone, on the machine I needed \u2026 You\u2019re close, but you\u2019re not quite right. This isn\u2019t about getting angry while you\u2019re exercising, it\u2019s about getting angry in order to exercise.<\/p>\n
What are we talking here? Blowing off a bit of steam? Listening to Eminem? It mainly seems to involve pummelling a tractor tyre with a sledgehammer.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s just a high-rep shoulder and core workout. Yes, but it\u2019s the symbolism that counts. You could be hitting anything with that sledgehammer.<\/p>\n
Like my tumble dryer that just broke, or the car that cut me up yesterday. Now you\u2019re getting it.<\/p>\n
Isn\u2019t all exercise a bit angry, really? Well, yes. But increasingly the anger is the point. In Knoxville, Tennessee, there\u2019s a rage room Hiit class where attenders can take out their frustrations on a succession of ropes, punchbags and, yes, tractor tyres.<\/p>\n
Oh, wow. And in Newcastle, England, there\u2019s a feminine rage class, where attenders scream with anger as they punch and lunge. Lauren Peters, who attends the class regularly, told the New York Post that the screaming is \u201cguttural and loud and emotional and exactly what we all need\u201d.<\/p>\n
Aren\u2019t there actual rage rooms for this? Sure. There\u2019s a growing number of places<\/a> where, for a fee, you get to spend an hour whaling on ceramics and old appliances with a baseball bat. But that\u2019s expensive and difficult to clean up.<\/p>\n This sounds like a perfect alternative. It isn\u2019t quite that simple. In 2002, Brad Bushman of Iowa State University published a paper<\/a> on the best way to defuse anger, and this ain\u2019t it.<\/p>\n No? Of course not. Physically venting your anger actually increases it, he found. In fact, he wrote that people who hit inanimate objects when they\u2019re angry are basically just \u201cpractising how to behave aggressively\u201d.<\/p>\n So, people who go to these classes are just making themselves angrier? Well, that study seems to suggest catharsis is a really terrible way of getting anger out of your system.<\/p>\n Really? What\u2019s better? Get this \u2013 doing nothing at all.<\/p>\n That can\u2019t be true. Apparently so. In his tests, Bushman found that the least angry people in his research were the control group, who just sat quietly for two minutes instead of hitting anything.<\/p>\n So, no hammers and tyres? No. Instead, join my new gym. It\u2019s completely empty and you don\u2019t have to lift a finger. You\u2019ll calm down and I\u2019ll get rich. Win-win.<\/p>\n Do say: \u201cI am wildly angry all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n Don\u2019t say: \u201cCan\u2019t I just internalise it until my nervous system gives out?\u201d<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Name: Rage workouts. Age: Would this be a good time to invoke Aristotle\u2019s beliefs on catharsis? Appearance: Pumped-up,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[49,48,407,84],"class_list":["post-649614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fitness","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}