It has been just over three months since my last Thursday Tempo to kick off 2021. While work has kept me busier than expected, I continue to coach a few athletes, record audio runs, and lead a weekly outdoor speed and strength workout. Having received my first dose of the vaccine last week, I expect to return to more coaching, training, and racing this summer!
I have always been curious about whether audio stimulation impacts athletic performance. Music has motivated me during hard training runs, and I intentionally match the intensity of music to the intensity of the effort in my treadmill classes to motivate others. According to the Running USA Trends Report, over 60% of runners listen to something while running, with over 80% of those runners listening to music.
When I run, about half the time, I listen to music, podcasts, or audiobooks. The other half of the time, I reconnect with my thoughts. Some days, having someone in your ear is motivating. It’s what helped me complete a three-month running streak that I started on January 1 and hope to extend through at least June.
The Case for Running With Music
In 1997, one of the first studies on the effect of music on athlete performance found that appropriately-selected music reduces perceived exertion and increases output. Since then, additional research has increased our understanding of how music can enhance both training and competition:
Reducing Perceived Effort: Music diverts the mind from sensations of fatigue for low and moderate intensity but not for 85+% effort, where fatigue and physiological feedback such as sweat and lactic acid outweigh the impact of music
Creating Optimal Mindset: Music activates the sub-cerebellum and amygdala parts of the brain, effectively regulating emotions to serve as a stimulant or sedative depending on the environment
Improving Efficiency: Music synchronized to movement provides temporal cues that have the potential to make energy use more efficient, increasing endurance
Motor Skill Development: The right music can enhance motor skill acquisition, since music replicates forms of rhythmic movement and its lyrics can reinforce good technique
Increased Intrinsic Motivation: Music may help in the perception and attainment of “flow” states
If music has these benefits on running, what type of music should you listen to? Plenty of research suggests to match the rhythm and tempo of your activity type to a song’s beats per minute (BPM). For example:
Stretching or Yoga: 90-110 BPM (Rihanna, “What’s My Name,” 100 BPM)
Strength Training: 110-130 BPM (Queen, “Under Pressure,” 114 BPM)
Low Intensity Running: 120-140 BPM (Black Eyed Peas, “I Gotta Feeling,” 127 BPM)
Moderate Intensity Running: 140-160 BPM (Florence and the Machine, “Dog Days are Over,” 150 BPM)
For running, there is mixed research on actively matching your stride rate or cadence to BPM. This is more difficult to do for workouts such as intervals where you do not maintain a steady cadence. There also seems to be a BPM “ceiling” of approximately 140 BPM, above which performance improvement is negligible, analogous to the limited impact music has when you are at 85+% effort.
Music with higher levels of bass increases your sense of power and might be ideal to pump you up before a hard workout, such as Michael Phelps’ pre-race songs of Future’s “Stick Talk” or Lil Wayne’s “I’m Me,” while soulful ballads can serve to calm anxious feelings before a contest, such as Dame Kelly Holmes’ pre-race songs of Alicia Keys' “Fallin” and “If I Ain’t Got You.”
The Case for Running Without Music
The easiest argument for running without music is more awareness of your surroundings, especially if running near traffic or running alone. Several major marathons either ban or strongly discourage the use of headphones to ensure runners can hear announcements and be mindful of other runners.
Beyond safety reasons, running without music allows you to be in more control of your run, from your breathing and perceived exertion to your thoughts and the environment. This hyper-awareness can help you control your pacing and improve your mental fortitude, even though most people hate being left alone with their own thoughts and prefer conversing with a running buddy instead.
The Case for Running Without Music, but With Something Else
For many people, running is when they do their best thinking. There’s evidence that you are more open to new information and more creative while running. Running engages the automatic or subconscious parts of our brain, freeing up and activating the conscious parts. As a result, some argue that listening to podcasts or audiobooks or practicing mindful meditation during runs can be doubly productive, achieving physical fitness as well as mental fitness by priming your mind for more creative thinking.
Whether or not you decide to run with additional audio stimulation is up to you. As described in Why Do You Run?, “Running is your time to find what you are looking for and whatever you need: community, peace and respite, intensity, dreams of lofty goals, freedom of the outdoors, youthfulness, metaphors about hard work and sacrifice.” So before you head out the door, ask yourself, “Why am I running today?” Will a sound in your ear can help achieve your purpose? Run to your own beat.
Running Motivation
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