Scents for a Workout Boost

A little spritz goes a long way.

Welcome to HEAVIES, a spiritual and modern Substack about health and wellness written by Chris Gayomali, a journalist and former GQ editor.

I remember the first time I set foot inside an Equinox, back in 2009. I was 24 and making less than $30,000 a year. My girlfriend at the time, a social butterfly who worked at a members-only club on 14th street, managed to score us some guest passes for one of the gym’s Manhattan locations. One of the Upper-* sides, I forget which one.

It was the middle of the day and setting foot inside felt like the height of luxury: filtered water station, gay retirees wearing cool headbands, a kettlebell that weighed more than 12 kilos. Until that point I had thought that a fancy gym was a 24 Hour Fitness in possession of a functioning wipes dispenser and maybe ESPN with subtitles, so quite naturally Equinox felt alien. Foreign. A decadent concept like "the Hamptons" or “401k matching” that I had never really considered. 

The thing that made me really feel like a pauper in a palace was the legendary mini fridge, filled with cold towels scented with eucalyptus. I remember asking an employee Why eucalyptus? and he said it was mostly to help people breathe a little easier. (Small wonder it’s one of the main ingredients in nasal decongestants like Vicks.)

I barely broke a sweat that day—not because I was in great shape or anything, but because my workouts back then largely consisted of dumbbell curls or whatever—and I must’ve used like five towels, all of which were hastily disappeared by unseen forces.

These days I like my gyms clean but on the dingier side. Well loved. You want the sense that all the equipment is actually used by people who know how to bang metal. But the smell of eucalyptus still gives me terminal spa brain, though now I have a retirement account and can tell you that the onion rings at Sip N’ Soda are above average. Still, the idea that a scent can have a determinative effect on performance, even in tiny tiny ways, has stuck with me. Why do scents—moreso than visuals and arguably even music—have so much power over our physiology? 

The main reason that smell is so potent is because the brain’s olfactory bulb is in close proximity to the limbic system, or the region of the brain where memories are filed—specifically emotional memories. Salty beaches from a family vacation. The kimchi fridge in the garage. Your grandpa’s collar that always stunk of Marlboro Reds. Scents are a direct line to powerful associations, especially if that smell is energizing.

Take mint, for example. Its enlivening effects are well known (see: toothpaste, chewing gum) but there’s some evidence that it might actually help exercise performance too. One randomized double-blind study from 2023 found that adding a drop of peppermint essential oil to water before and during a run “significantly increases the time to exhaustion of recreational runners.” More limited studies showed similar results, suggesting that mint’s ability to relax the bronchial smooth muscles might help with oxygen intake.

(Sidenote: This is wayyyyyy too advanced for me, but there are some compelling arguments for using a minty morning toothpaste to wake up and get your day started, and using a more soothing toothpaste flavor—like cinnamon or lavender—to wind down before bedtime and help you sleep better. Which makes sense if you’re the kind of person who falls asleep on the couch and can’t fall back asleep after dragging themselves to get ready for bed…) 

Smell, of course, can work in the other direction. More than a handful of NFL players have turned to smelling salts—a mixture of ammonia, water, and ethanol; foul shit—as an in-game stimulant. While typically used to help treat spells of fainting, the stench irritates the nose and lungs, rudely smacking the smeller awake. As Demarcus Lawrence told ESPN back in 2017: “The ammonia wakes you up, opens your eyes. You'll be on the bench, you start to get a little tired and you got to wake your body up, and that's what that little ammonia does for you."

But this is a sophisticated Substack, if not very mindful, so I reached out to my friend Sable Yong, a writer and author of the buzzy essay collection Die Hot With a Vengeance who also co-hosts a fragrance podcast called Smell Ya Later, for her take. What kinds of scents and fragrances should we be using on the regular for a little energy boost?