Photo credit: Aberdeen Proving Ground licensed under CC BY 2.0
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
This article in The New York Times discusses how loud fitness classes are requiring instructors to shout over the motivational music and noise from gym equipment causing vocal cord damage. The article doesn’t discuss how the loud environment causes noise-induced hearing loss in instructors or those attending the exercise classes, but that’s a problem, too. Dangerous decibels at fitness centers may lead to hearing loss.
And here’s the funny thing: as best as I can tell, there are no studies in the sports medicine or exercise physiology literature showing that loud music increases performance, in any sport or exercise activity. Everyone thinks that loud music improves athletic performance, but that’s just a myth. Music with the right beat may help exercisers maintain a rhythm in sports where that’s important, such as rowing or running, but it doesn’t appear to help one lift more weight. So both the vocal damage and the auditory damage caused by loud gym music are completely unnecessary.
Both instructors and students should remember a simple rule: if it sounds too loud, it is too loud. If they can’t carry on a normal conversation without straining to speak or to be heard, the ambient noise is above 75 A-weighted decibels*, and that’s loud enough to cause auditory damage.
*A-weighting adjusts sound measurements to reflect the frequencies heard in human speech.
