Some people go to the gym to get fit. Others go there to get angry.
It is called a rage workout. The idea is not that you get annoyed at the gym, perhaps at the man who sits on the machine you need while he checks his phone. The idea is that you get angry on purpose, and use that anger to power your exercise.
A popular move is hitting a huge tractor tire with a heavy hammer. On paper, that is just a hard workout for your shoulders and stomach. But what matters is what the tire stands for. It could be your broken dryer, or the driver who cut in front of you yesterday.
In Knoxville, Tennessee, one gym runs a "rage room" class. People take out their anger on ropes, punching bags and, yes, tractor tires. In Newcastle, England, another class has people shout as loudly as they can while they punch the air and step forward. One regular told a newspaper that the screaming is "exactly what we all need."
There are also rage rooms, where people pay to spend an hour smashing plates and old machines with a baseball bat. A class costs less, and nobody has to sweep up the mess afterward.
So is this a healthy way to let anger out? Science says probably not.
In 2002, Brad Bushman, a researcher at Iowa State University, looked for the best way to calm anger down. He found that letting anger out with your body, such as by hitting things, did not make it go away. It made people angrier. Those who hit objects when they are angry, he wrote, are basically "practicing how to behave aggressively."
So what worked better? Doing nothing at all. The calmest people in his study had not hit anything. They had simply sat quietly for two minutes.
That is bad news for the tractor tire. It is good news for everyone else. The cheapest way to cool down may be to sit still and wait.