Think of It as an Exercise, Not a Yawn

Q I bought a 30-minute resistance-cord video. I really like it, but the weird thing is that at the beginning of my routine, I start yawning a great deal. At first I thought I was just tired, but it happens every time I start exercising. Any explanation for that?

-- Anonymous

A Before I help you, Anonymous, I need to address the folks slurping their cereal as they read this: All right, fess up, how many of you yawned just now? Or wanted to?

That's because yawning is one of the most contagious of all human behaviors, according to Robert Provine, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, who specializes in yawning (and laughing, but we'll save that for a later column). "Anything that's related to yawning will trigger yawning, so if your reader is thinking about yawning, that itself will be a prompt to yawn," he says.

So there's a chance you were zonked the first time you worked out with the resistance cord, and now you keep repeating that behavior.

There's nothing particularly odd about yawning during or immediately prior to exercise. Often elite athletes do it before a competition, as does Provine, who guesses there's a link between warming up the muscles and yawning. But forget the myth that we yawn in order to take in more oxygen. We don't.

"A yawn is a kind of stretch that involves respiration," he explains. It would be more unusual for the yawning to continue through an intense exercise session, because "if you're really huffing and puffing, you won't yawn," he adds.

However, if you start yawning excessively, it may be worth seeing a doctor. Provine notes that yawning can also be associated with hemorrhage, drug withdrawal and brain lesions.