In March this year, I participated in the most-excellent Science Media Space. One of the activities was to write a blog post about an interesting science topic. Yes, it has taken a while, but here's my take on the use of music in sport.
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| Couldn’t have made it through Run Geelong without my favourite playlist! |
My birthday has passed for another year, signalling not only
that I’ve made it through another year in the lab, but also the shift to cooler
weather. Yes, summer is over (BOO!), and I actually wore my scarf for the first
time this morning. But with autumn comes my return to a regime that 30C days
sees fall by the wayside…
Roller Derby Fitness!
Yes, back to suicide runs, ridiculous looking squats, and the
universally hated Spiderman
Climbs. As a ref, we skate the full hour game, having to keep up with
the fastest jammer, break hard with every tumble, and dodge each other nigh
constantly. Sadly, our 2x3hr training sessions a week just don’t cut the
mustard for that level of endurance. But before your quadriceps begin aching in
sympathy, this increase in physical activity has one serious upside…
New Workout Playlist!
I’ve currently got a few new playlists that I’m trialling,
spending a few minutes after each session pruning the slow tracks (The Vines
“Ms Jackson” sadly cut), and finding the exact spot to place that motivating
power song (Hello, Flogging Molly’s “Seven Deadly Sins”!). But questionable musical
taste aside, I was excited to learn there’s an increasing body of science
studying how music can affect our exercise performance.
Lets Get
Physical
There are plenty of different factors that may influence the
effect that music has on us during exercise. These can be loosely divided into
the internal (rhythm response, and your own innate ‘musicality’), and the
external (Cultural influences, and associations to particular music). We’re going to focus more on the former here
today, but as you can see in Figure 1, there is a complex interplay between all
these factors that impact on how we react to music during physical exertion.
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| Music can affect us in many different ways, with many potential benefits (RPE= Rating of Perceived Exertion; Karageorghis & Priest 2011 Creative Commons) |
Little is actually known about the mechanisms of how this
occurs, because the equipment you would normally use to measure
neurophysiological responses is notoriously immobile. Imagine trying to MRI
someone in the middle of a footy field! That said, scientists are developing a
good picture of the end result of listening to music while you work out.
Music exerts what is known as an ergogenic effect on our
bodies, that is it improves physical exercise performance by delaying the onset
of fatigue or increasing our capacity for work, which manifest as “higher-than-expected
levels of endurance, power, productivity or strength”. It also has a
psychological effect, influencing mood, emotion, thought processes and
behaviour, and psychophysiological effects, such as the perception of effort
and fatigue.
Big
Distraction
The nervous system is complex, but sensory stimuli, like
music, can
actually block the feedback signals created in response to exercise.
Literally a sensory overload, you’re distracting the body from responding to
fatigue. This varies at different exercise levels, i.e. the harder your body is
working, the stronger the physical feedback signals, so the inhibiting effect
of music gets drowned out. Even so, your choice of music may actually make you
feel better about
being fatigued, so don’t write it off if you’re pushing your
boundaries!
Totally
Addicted to Bass
We all do it. You’re favourite song comes on, and you start
using your fingers, feet, and the nearest surface to start tapping out the
percussion. Humans are hard-wired to synchronise our movements to music. Its
been suggested that we have a pattern
generator, much like a pacemaker in our brain, that coordinates
afferent (incoming/sensory) & efferent (outgoing/motor) nerve signals,
resulting in the syncing we see when our stride starts matching the beat.
The part of our brain that processes pre-movement signals
shows increased activity with a ‘preferred’ tempo, making it easier
to key-in to a beat that appeals to us. Our body relaxes more into
exercise when it can follow a repetitive rhythm, like that throbbing baseline,
increasing efficiency by taking away the need for minute kinetic adjustment,
letting you maintain that steady state longer than in the absence of music.
It’s not just that bass drum either: When scientists just played
the extracted drumbeat to participants, while still better than no
music, endurance decreased. This pushes the case that it is a collective
impact, the beat, lyrics and harmonies, that make the difference.
Pump Up the
Jam
Changing the tempo of your music can lead to a change in
your work rate. There have been a couple of studies that have shown that when
we switch to a higher tempo, the faster pace seems more stimulating, and we up our
output. Its great for when your enthusiasm starts to plateau,
especially when you’re hitting the later stages of your workout. Long live the
power song!
Faster music is generally preferred at higher exercise
intensities, i.e. when your heart is really pumping. However, this relationship
is not linear, and actually
tapers off at higher levels of exertion. So while that 180 bpm
espoused as the golden rule by running music webpages everywhere may be perfect
for elite athletes, your mileage may vary depending on your fitness level, how
hard you’re pushing, and what your goals are.
Louder fast paced
music can also be beneficial, leading to high output, though changing
volumes at slow tempos does little. Just keep in mind that loud music can
damage your ears, or drown out things like traffic. Your danger response reflex
will be dampened, so you may not notice a hazard until its too late.
Push It Real
Good
Self-paced exercise, like what we do when we go for a run,
ride or skate, is where the effect of music really shines. It has been
demonstrated that motivational music (generally 140+ bpm) can enhance exertion
without increasing perceived exertion. This means that they are
increasing their speed, power, distance, what-have-you, without actually
realising they are working harder!
So how do we put this all together? Get an idea of where you
are now, and where you want to be. Then, put together a play list of tracks
that you love, aiming for a BPM range that matches your style, varying the
tempo for your chosen workout, For example, my intervals playlist starts with a
140 warm-up, a 130 stretch song, then jumps around between 140-170, with a 180
‘sprint’ song thrown in every now and then to pump up the motivation. Last
season, I had a great ‘pyramid’ list, which started at 130, and got
incrementally faster with each song, peaking with 3 minutes of 180 bpm before
incrementally decreasing again. Then, like every good scientist, test, refine,
repeat!
So load up your mp3 player, lace-up your boots, and get that
heart rate pumping. Step aside dodgy AFL ‘peptides’: Music is the drug, a 100%
legal performance-enhancing drug.
