{"id":455336,"date":"2026-05-18T19:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T19:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/455336\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T19:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T19:03:08","slug":"men-are-using-this-forbidden-pre-workout-to-lift-heavier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/455336\/","title":{"rendered":"Men Are Using This \u2018Forbidden Pre-Workout\u2019 to Lift Heavier"},"content":{"rendered":"

Noah\u2019s pre-workout was screenshots<\/a>. In August of last year, the 29-year-old from the Philippines says he found out his girlfriend had been cheating<\/a>. After the relationship had ended, he kept the receipts on his phone<\/a>, and started reading them before sets. At first, he wasn’t sure why. A month later, he had a theory: Looking at them put him in a state of rage\u2014one that helped him lift heavier than he’d ever lifted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gets your heart racing faster than any pre-workout I\u2019ve ever tried,” Noah, who says he preferred not to give his last name to protect his privacy, says, “And the short burst of emotions does help when trying to hit a PR.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noah was unknowingly taking part in what a handful of sadistic gym rats have dubbed \u2018the forbidden pre-workout,\u2019 a phrase that inevitably pops up if you spend any amount of time in gym subreddits, follow fitness influencers<\/a> on TikTok, or watch workout videos on YouTube. The premise is purposely humiliating: A person (typically a man, but not always<\/a>) takes the jealousy or humiliation of a breakup<\/a>, real or imagined, and converts it into reps. Often aforementioned imaginary scenarios paint a picture in which their partner has already moved on with someone far better. The \u201cforbidden\u201d descriptor is the wink\u2014those calling their pre-workout probably know it’s not healthy in the same way that, say, Omega-3s<\/a> are. That, or they simply revere such emotionally dicey territory as a potent force.<\/p>\n

Scroll through r\/GymMemes and you can see the way the phrase has infiltrated certain parts of the exercise-obsessed manosphere, repurposed in everything from Drake \u201cHotline Bling\u201d memes<\/a> to a skull whispering in a man\u2019s ear<\/a> telling him \u201cthis is why she left you.\u201d So much so that savvy supplement brands<\/a> have absorbed it into their ad copy, too. As an April Fool\u2019s joke this year, the supplement company Vosus Nutrition posted an April Fool’s mockup of a tub called Forbidden Pre<\/a>. Its label was a printout of a breakup text. \u201cZero flavors,\u201d the caption read. \u201cJust one savage text in every tub.\u201d<\/p>\n

Older than the algorithm<\/p>\n

Though the term \u2018forbidden pre-workout\u2019 may be relatively new, the practice of conjuring romantic slights as motivation is decades older. The 1980s bodybuilder Tom Platz, nicknamed \u201cthe Quadfather\u201d for his powerful legs, has told a version of the same tale for years. Four months before the 1981 Mr. Olympia, his story goes, his fianc\u00e9e left him for his training partner. After that, he says he walked into Gold’s Gym the next day and trained harder than he ever had. \u201cThe hurt, the pain, the terrible trauma turned out to be the best thing in the world for me,\u201d Platz says in a video<\/a> that often circulates through online gym and bodybuilding communities. He placed third in that year\u2019s Mr. Olympia, the best showing there he had in his career.<\/p>\n

These days, similar stories are being told in the form of TikToks. Jonah Grundy, a 24-year-old creator from Florida, makes gym content<\/a> that can steer into forbidden pre-workout territory. His TikTok grid is full of low-lit gym footage with captions like \u201cshe left you to sit at home alone\u201d and \u201cshe really meant that much to you?\u201d When I reached out he said he hadn’t heard the phrase forbidden pre-workout, but he runs across the idea of rage-inducing scenarios as fitness motivation all the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people use it for fuel,\u201d Grundy says. \u201cWhen you put so much time and energy there is this void and you no longer know what to do with it.” Better the gym than the doomscroll, he figures.<\/p>\n