Lock a table on purpose without returning results

In an update script I'm locking several tables.

BEGIN TRANSACTION
    SELECT Top 0 Null FROM TableA with (holdlock, tablockx)
    SELECT Top 0 Null FROM TableB with (holdlock, tablockx)
    ...

I want to suppress results for it in order to focus on real script results. Is there an elegant way to xlock a table without getting a result set?

You could update some records with a where clause that never matches like this:

Test setup:

CREATE TABLE locktest (id int, sometext nvarchar(50));

INSERT INTO locktest (id, sometext) VALUES
(1, 'dqsmfkqdsfjm'),
(2, 'qmsdfmdj'), 
(3, 'qkfjmsdfjk');

If you then, in one query window execute this:

BEGIN TRAN;
UPDATE locktest WITH (tablockx)  SET id=null WHERE 1=2;

You will see that a SELECTin another query window is blocked until you execute

COMMIT TRAN;

This would lock the table without returning a result set.
If you want to suppress the 0 rows affected message you could add

SET NOCOUNT ON;

If you only want to block updates but let readers still read the table you could use:

UPDATE locktest WITH (tablock, updlock)  SET id=null WHERE 1=2;

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#155580, answer score: 9