Should you’re anything like me, you’ve got a rigorously curated gym playlist, guaranteed to get you into the correct mindset to tackle your workout. If I forget to charge my headphones or leave them at home, I feel like I’m starting up my workout at a drawback and usually do not have the workout I envisioned on my option to the gym. But is there any science behind this? The reply in brief, is yes!
What the Research Says
Let’s be clear right off the rip. Blasting your favorite song isn’t going to make your bench press miraculously shoot up by 50lbs. As great as it might be to spice up your power output by simply pressing play, it isn’t going to occur. But what it could possibly do is help along with your endurance while training. In a study published in 2021, the speed of perceived exertion (RPE) was lower in those listening to preferred music over those that listened to unpreferred or no music in any respect.¹
They consider this lower RPE is as a result of having the ability to concentrate on the music and dissociate from the activity itself, resulting in greater enjoyment while performing the activity. Should you don’t think that is accurate, try walking on a treadmill for five minutes at a brisk pace with no headphones in. Then try it again with one in all your favorite upbeat (we’ll get into that later) songs. Tell me which mini-cardio session felt prefer it went by quicker.
Music Variety and Exercise
So, one extremely necessary phrase in that last section was preferred music. That very same study found that performance could actually suffer if the music wasn’t preferred by the athletes.²
Need an example? Have you ever ever forgotten to charge your headphones or showed as much as the gym without them? It is a living hell. I’ve turned around and gone home a couple of times myself, simply because I knew my workout would not be the extent I wanted it to be at.
If you’ve got a membership to a business gym and have been subjected to the heinous music they’ve going over the speakers, I can almost guarantee you are not going to hit a PR in anything. I like Enya as much as the following guy, but I’m not repping 315 listening to “Orinoco Flow”; the truth is, I’m more more likely to drop the bar on my neck (even though it is an excellent song).
One other necessary factor to contemplate is the tempo of your music. One other study published in Frontiers in Psychology set out to search out the effect of the tempo of music on endurance and high-intensity exercise performance. What they found was that higher tempo music (170-190bpm) had a significant effect on RPE as you’ll be able to see from the table below.³
You may also see, while there was a difference in perceived exertion during high intensity exercise, it wasn’t nearly as effective as while during an endurance exercise.
Here’s where it starts to get much more interesting. The unique study I referenced in the primary section said that “Preference for each high tempo and loud volume music have been shown to be increased during high intensity exercise”.⁴ So, while Figure 1 doesn’t show a dramatic difference, there still is something to be said for blasting some metal or faster paced EDM when pushing yourself during a workout.
The boundaries of how effective this may be were discussed in one other study published, which stated that a difference in effort or fatigue couldn’t be found during a 30-second all-out cycling test.⁵ This will mean that the consequences of music can hit a limit to how much it affects the processing of your body’s sensory cues. In other words, it’s possible that if you happen to’re pushing yourself to absolutely the limit (think along the lines of Tabata), what’s playing in your earbuds is not going to make an entire lot of difference because your body can only process a lot input. But where it continues to shine is for longer-length sessions.
Going The Distance
So, as we have already covered, music can aid you shut out a few of your body’s stimuli, telling you that you need to be getting drained. The identical study referenced directly above found that in a gaggle of 25 males and 25 females aged 19-25, exercise duration increased dramatically when listening to music versus without.
While there wasn’t an actual number given, the music played was “fast and loud.”⁶ Should you’re not convinced by now that music could be a performance enhancer, especially with regards to endurance activities, I do not understand how else to prove it to you.
What To Listen To
In accordance with all of the studies above, music that has faster BPM played at the next level is the option to go. But if you happen to cannot stand Metallica with every fiber of your being, you are not going to have an excellent time figuring out with them blasting. Anecdotally, I’ve heard some people swear by listening to smooth jazz or R&B during a workout. Others can workout for hours listening to classical music. I even know people whose gym playlists are purely video game music.
Personally, I feel it’s really going to come back all the way down to music that you simply connect with. Once I’m lifting, I need to hearken to AC/DC, Queens of The Stone Age, and other bands with a faster tempo. On the subject of cardio, a few of the most effective jogs I have been on were while I used to be listening to Pink Floyd, a notoriously slow-tempo band.
Conclusion
Should you take anything away from this text, know that listening to music can improve your workout. The importance goes to depend upon what style of exercise is being performed and what you are listening to. Should you’re anything like me, you’ve got your workout playlist queued up before you even walk into the gym.
We’re curious to know what form of music motivates you within the gym. Drop links within the comments below to your favorite Spotify gym playlists to assist others get essentially the most out of their workouts!
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