Performance Enhancing Playlists
Why the music matters...
Lately, I’ve been experimenting with what I listen to while I’m exercising. It varies considerably - and also depends on what I’m doing - but as someone who has spent way too much some time curating the perfect playlist for a group fitness class, I know the power of a hype playlist. Don’t get me wrong: a recovery run or a treadmill walk are both prime opportunities to catch up on an audiobook- and all of those have a good and necessary place in a routine, too. However, research tells us that when it comes to a dedicated sweat session, the tunes you choose may help you get the last drop out of your mileage.
Regardless of how you feel about David Goggins’s philosophy, you’ve likely heard that in bouts of endurance or difficult exercise, we all tend to let the perception of fatigue guide our efforts. Once the performance tends to wane and the discomfort sets in, our brain tends to do a pretty stellar job of convincing us we’ve done enough.
Obviously, there’s a ton of neurophysiology happening behind the scenes, but as our brain takes in data through sensory input, calculates our mental investment in the activity, and estimates our perceived effort of the work we’re putting in, it ultimately attempts to protect us when the discomfort alarms begin to sound. Research has shown that even when participants think they’ve reached maximum effort, they actually still have a physiologic reserve available.
Testing exercise tolerance with interventions like music help determine whether it’s possible to override the brain’s perception of threat via physical exhaustion. There are a few mechanisms by which this takes place: 1) distraction, 2) the rhythmic component relative to movement, and 3) the increase of arousal (e.g. the hype) to power through the physical “cost”.
However, the music we choose for ourselves can potentially affect us differently than an instructor-chosen playlist (in a group fitness class, for example). Anecdotally, this is 100% true. It’s also one of the reasons I never use a themed playlist that chooses a specific genre, artist, or beat. (The other being that if one person in class hated it, they’d either have to sit through an entire class being miserable or forego their workout and leave.)
When I’m teaching class and a new song comes on, I can literally see the change in effort - for better or for worse. And, although I listen to a wide variety of music, I rarely play songs I personally love because there’s so many that simply wouldn’t work for an exercise scenario. Ultimately, music has the power to distract our minds from the hard things we’re doing, and help us develop exercise tolerance that may not exist if say…. we get to the gym and realized our earbuds are out of battery. (THE. WORST.)
A small study in Finland tested the effects of tunes on exercise performance. Participants were first required to complete a maximal graded exercise tests on a cycle erg. (For my cycling friends interested in the protocol: this meant starting at 70W and increasing by 25W every 2 minutes until they could no longer hold 60rpm).
After a week of recovery from the maximal tests, the cyclists were then instructed to create their own playlists with any songs they wanted, as long as the tempo was between 120-140bpm, which was verified by researchers. They then completed two separate Time to Exhaustion (TTE) cycling trials: one with music and one without music with a minimum of 48 hours in between.
Participants in the music trial cycled, on average, approximately 6 minutes longer than they did without music. Music trials also resulted in greater cardiovascular volume, and an increase in time above one’s anaerobic threshold (without a corresponding increase in their perceived exertion). In the end, heart rate and blood lactate, which is a metabolic byproduct of exercise, remained about the same for both groups. This may indicate that the music supported the sustained effort rather than the body shifting metabolic resources to make it happen.
The authors of the study pose a few theories toward the improved performance of the musically motivated groups. One is simply that music may offer more meaning to the experience, thus increasing the value of the exercise session. Getting lost in the music also helps us shift our attention from the bodily discomforts, which can be a welcome distraction as we learn to tolerate the physical strain of high-intensity effort.
Metrics aside, music is a powerful motivator. For high intensity bouts of cardio or for those of longer duration, it can be a useful tool for increasing exercise tolerance. However, on resistance training days, sometimes I opt for lyric-free music so I can have something to drown out gym noise without distracting me from the work I’m doing.
There’s no right or wrong way to add music to your routine. But, the next time that you have a tough sweat session on deck, pull out some of your tried and true favorites. You know, the ones that you put on all your burned CDs in the early 2000s? See how far those tunes take you.
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Thanks Simply Fit! I enjoyed this one!