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MUSIC CAN ELEVATE YOUR WORKOUT—AND WE HAVE THE SCIENCE TO PROVE IT
You know that feeling when you’re in perfect sync with a bass-pumping tune at the height of your B3 workout? Your heart is thumping in time with the music, your muscles are burning, you’re right at your edge and from somewhere you find the strength to power through one last set of B3 Burpees. How did you get there? What role did the song just play?
For answers, we turned to Dr. Costas Karageorghis, one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of music in exercise. Karageorghis’s recent book, Applying Music in Exercise and Sport, explores the latest research and evidence-based practice on this exact topic. Read on for his fascinating insights!
B3 MAGAZINE: What effect does the combination of music and exercise have on the human brain and body? Can you take us on a whistle-stop tour of the science?
COSTAS KARAGEORGHIS: One of the biggest benefits of exercising to music is that it enhances the pleasure of exercise. Music is able to tap the mood-related areas of the brain, such as the amygdala or cerebellum (the reptilian part). When we work out at high intensities, it enhances our mood state without the need for complex processing in the higher cortex. So, as a stimulus, music is particularly effective in countering the dissuasive influence of pain and discomfort.
B3: In other words, in moments where we might otherwise be tempted to give up, music can help us power through?
CK: Right. Music is extremely effective in lowering our perceived exertion at low-to-moderate intensities of exercise. It takes up some of the bandwidth in the afferent nervous system, which is responsible for taking messages from our muscles and organs to the brain, and prevents some of those unpleasant, fatigue-related signals from entering our focal awareness.
B3: Could this ever be a bad thing? For example, could music make us push our bodies harder than we actually should?
CK: Once we go beyond 75% of our aerobic capacity, moving into a very high intensity, our research shows that music is ineffectual in reducing how hard we perceive we’re working. Your mind is forced to focus internally on those fatigue-related signals—we experience the phenomenon of “attentional switching.”
At those high intensities, although music doesn’t alter what you feel, it does bear an influence on how you feel it. It can color our interpretation of fatigue, so we can exercise harder and for longer. Our whole experience is more pleasurable with the right type of music.
B3: What is the “right” type of music?
CK: Essentially, you’re looking for a very strong beat with which you can synchronize. You want to avoid excessive syncopation or emphasis off the beat as this can be quite disorientating.
A lot of DJs talk about the notion of “four on the floor” where there’s a uniformly accented beat in 4/4 time and you can actually feel the pulse in the music. So if you are coordinating to the beat, it’s important that you’re able to extract the musical meter and make the audible visible in terms of your body movements.
In an exercise context, people don’t engage to such a cerebral level with the music they listen to as they do in other contexts. Lock into the rhythms!
B3: How should our playlist progress as the workout goes on?
CK: If you want music to have a workout-enhancing effect, then the best way is to match your movement to the beat. Then, you can select music that is one or two beats per minute higher in its tempo than your desired movement rate. This will give you an increase in work rate but that increase will be imperceptible. So you work harder and you feel better at the same time. There are not many stimuli that can have that effect—but music does.
B3: Anything else we should consider when choosing workout tunes?
CK: The optimal music for exercise also has certain harmonic qualities and tends to gravitate towards the major mode. Music that’s in the minor mode or uses more unnerving, disrupting harmonies don’t work well in an exercise context where you’re trying to elevate your mood state in order to counter the fatigue-related signals from the musculature and vital organs.
B3: How does music volume affect our mood and motivation?
CK: There’s a sweet spot: If you want to play the music loudly, around 75-85 decibels at ear level is perfect. Rule of thumb: You should be able to maintain a conversation with the person next to you. For the warm-up and the cool-down, we recommend lower intensities of music between 60-65 decibels. This way, the intensity of the music mirrors the physiological intensity of the exercise.
B3: How does moving to music in a group differ from moving to music alone?
CK: In many cultures, the word for music and dance is this same. There’s something primeval about listening to music, creating music, and moving to music in a group context that defines who we are as human beings. It’s something that draws us together and creates a true sense that we’re part of a broader community. It speaks to the core of what we are as human beings.
When we train with others, our visual, kinesthetic and auditory senses are all going in sync and that creates a huge sense of pleasure. When all of these neurons are firing in synchrony with one another, it is a truly wonderful thing.
For more fascinating facts on the science of music as it relates to exercise, follow Dr. Karageorghis and his team on Twitter (@SAVIBrunel). They even post playlists with their top workout-enhancing tunes!
You know that feeling when you’re in perfect sync with a bass-pumping tune at the height of your B3 workout? Your heart is thumping in time with the music, your muscles are burning, you’re right at your edge and from somewhere you find the strength to power through one last set of B3 Burpees. How did you get there? What role did the song just play?
For answers, we turned to Dr. Costas Karageorghis, one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of music in exercise. Karageorghis’s recent book, Applying Music in Exercise and Sport, explores the latest research and evidence-based practice on this exact topic. Read on for his fascinating insights!
B3 MAGAZINE: What effect does the combination of music and exercise have on the human brain and body? Can you take us on a whistle-stop tour of the science?
COSTAS KARAGEORGHIS: One of the biggest benefits of exercising to music is that it enhances the pleasure of exercise. Music is able to tap the mood-related areas of the brain, such as the amygdala or cerebellum (the reptilian part). When we work out at high intensities, it enhances our mood state without the need for complex processing in the higher cortex. So, as a stimulus, music is particularly effective in countering the dissuasive influence of pain and discomfort.
B3: In other words, in moments where we might otherwise be tempted to give up, music can help us power through?
CK: Right. Music is extremely effective in lowering our perceived exertion at low-to-moderate intensities of exercise. It takes up some of the bandwidth in the afferent nervous system, which is responsible for taking messages from our muscles and organs to the brain, and prevents some of those unpleasant, fatigue-related signals from entering our focal awareness.
B3: Could this ever be a bad thing? For example, could music make us push our bodies harder than we actually should?
CK: Once we go beyond 75% of our aerobic capacity, moving into a very high intensity, our research shows that music is ineffectual in reducing how hard we perceive we’re working. Your mind is forced to focus internally on those fatigue-related signals—we experience the phenomenon of “attentional switching.”
At those high intensities, although music doesn’t alter what you feel, it does bear an influence on how you feel it. It can color our interpretation of fatigue, so we can exercise harder and for longer. Our whole experience is more pleasurable with the right type of music.
B3: What is the “right” type of music?
CK: Essentially, you’re looking for a very strong beat with which you can synchronize. You want to avoid excessive syncopation or emphasis off the beat as this can be quite disorientating.
A lot of DJs talk about the notion of “four on the floor” where there’s a uniformly accented beat in 4/4 time and you can actually feel the pulse in the music. So if you are coordinating to the beat, it’s important that you’re able to extract the musical meter and make the audible visible in terms of your body movements.
In an exercise context, people don’t engage to such a cerebral level with the music they listen to as they do in other contexts. Lock into the rhythms!
B3: How should our playlist progress as the workout goes on?
CK: If you want music to have a workout-enhancing effect, then the best way is to match your movement to the beat. Then, you can select music that is one or two beats per minute higher in its tempo than your desired movement rate. This will give you an increase in work rate but that increase will be imperceptible. So you work harder and you feel better at the same time. There are not many stimuli that can have that effect—but music does.
B3: Anything else we should consider when choosing workout tunes?
CK: The optimal music for exercise also has certain harmonic qualities and tends to gravitate towards the major mode. Music that’s in the minor mode or uses more unnerving, disrupting harmonies don’t work well in an exercise context where you’re trying to elevate your mood state in order to counter the fatigue-related signals from the musculature and vital organs.
B3: How does music volume affect our mood and motivation?
CK: There’s a sweet spot: If you want to play the music loudly, around 75-85 decibels at ear level is perfect. Rule of thumb: You should be able to maintain a conversation with the person next to you. For the warm-up and the cool-down, we recommend lower intensities of music between 60-65 decibels. This way, the intensity of the music mirrors the physiological intensity of the exercise.
B3: How does moving to music in a group differ from moving to music alone?
CK: In many cultures, the word for music and dance is this same. There’s something primeval about listening to music, creating music, and moving to music in a group context that defines who we are as human beings. It’s something that draws us together and creates a true sense that we’re part of a broader community. It speaks to the core of what we are as human beings.
When we train with others, our visual, kinesthetic and auditory senses are all going in sync and that creates a huge sense of pleasure. When all of these neurons are firing in synchrony with one another, it is a truly wonderful thing.
For more fascinating facts on the science of music as it relates to exercise, follow Dr. Karageorghis and his team on Twitter (@SAVIBrunel). They even post playlists with their top workout-enhancing tunes!
