Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights_ - Alex Hutchinson [95]
Does listening to music or watching TV help or hurt my workout?
In a study published in 2009, researchers at Britain’s Liverpool John Moores University secretly sped up or slowed down music by 10 percent and observed the effect on subjects riding exercise bikes. Sure enough, like marionettes on musical strings, the riders unconsciously sped up or slowed down. The study confirms what gym-goers have known for a long time: music can have a significant impact on your exercise performance, and its influence extends far beyond the simple psych-up provided by motivational lyrics.
The dominant theory about why music boosts exercise performance is that you have a limited ability to pay attention to the information your senses gather. Focus on sounds and sights, the theory goes, and you’re less aware of the distress signals your muscles are sending you. A 2007 study by Vincent Nethery of Central Washington University offered support for this theory. Subjects exercising at a constant workload reported less discomfort when listening to music or watching a video. In contrast, an earlier study by Nethery found that subjects wearing earplugs and a blindfold reported greater levels of discomfort during exercise, presumably because they had nothing to focus on except their fatigue.
The British study adds a new twist by controlling the factors that usually confound studies of music and exercise: personal preferences, volume, pitch, duration, genre, lyrics, and so on. The researchers chose six tracks that “reflected current popular taste among the undergraduate population” and combined them into a single 25-minute program, then digitally altered it to create faster and slower versions without changing the pitch. The subjects exercised to the three versions with a week in between each session, and none of them noticed the differences in tempo. A 10 percent difference is quite small, lead researcher Jim Waterhouse says: “Compare the interpretations of Beethoven symphonies by Toscanini and Klemperer, for example.”
The link between musical tempo and effort confirms the findings of several earlier studies, albeit with greater rigor. What’s new, though, is the fact that the subjects reported greater enjoyment and higher levels of perceived exertion after the sped-up session. In other words, the faster music didn’t simply distract them from their discomfort; it motivated them to happily endure greater levels of discomfort.
This result—along with many other apparently conflicting studies in this area—suggests that the music-as-distraction theory ignores broader psychosocial factors, says Costas Karageorghis of Brunel University in Britain. He identifies rhythm, “musicality,” cultural impact, and the external associations of the song as the four key factors influencing a listener’s response. As a result, attempts to find universal effects of particular pieces, styles, or even speeds of music on exercise are doomed. Instead, Karageorghis says, people should tailor their play lists to their personal preferences, and gyms should play different types of music by the cardio machines (faster) and by the weights (motivational lyrics).
Interestingly, some researchers have found preliminary evidence that watching TV or videos is likely to slow your workout down, suggesting that too much distraction not only dulls your pain but also distracts you from putting forth an honest effort. The difference between video and music may have something to do with the active attention required to watch a video—holding your head in the right position, for example—compared to passively listening to music, Nethery says. “It may also highlight the value of rhythm associated with music,” he adds. That would mean listening to a podcast or to talk radio would be more akin to watching a TV show than listening to music, though this hypothesis has yet to be tested.
HEADPHONE DANGERS
In 2007, headphones were banned at all major road races in the United States. Although that ban has since been relaxed, listening to music while running or biking remains a serious safety