If you’re anything like me, you have a carefully curated gym playlist, guaranteed to get you into the right mindset to tackle your workout. If I forget to charge my headphones or leave them at home, I feel like I’m starting off my workout at a disadvantage and generally don’t have the workout I envisioned on my way to the gym. But is there any science behind this? The answer in short, is yes!
What the Research Says
Let’s be clear right off the rip. Blasting your favorite song is not going to make your bench press miraculously shoot up by 50lbs. As great as it would be to boost your power output by simply pressing play, it’s not going to happen. But what it can do is help with your endurance while training. In a study published in 2021, the rate of perceived exertion (RPE) was lower in those listening to preferred music over those who listened to unpreferred or no music at all.¹
They believe this lower RPE is due to being able to focus on the music and dissociate from the activity itself, leading to greater enjoyment while performing the activity. If you don’t think this is accurate, try walking on a treadmill for five minutes at a brisk pace with no headphones in. Then try it again with one of your favorite upbeat (we’ll get into that later) songs. Tell me which mini-cardio session felt like it went by quicker.
Music Variety and Exercise
So, one extremely important phrase in that last section was preferred music. That same study found that performance could actually suffer if the music wasn’t preferred by the athletes.²
Need an example? Have you ever forgotten to charge your headphones or showed up to the gym without them? It’s a living hell. I’ve turned around and gone home a few times myself, just because I knew my workout wouldn’t be the level I wanted it to be at.
If you have a membership to a commercial gym and have been subjected to the heinous music they have going over the speakers, I can almost guarantee you’re not going to hit a PR in anything. I like Enya as much as the next guy, but I’m not repping 315 listening to “Orinoco Flow”; in fact, I’m more likely to drop the bar on my neck (although it is a great song).
Another important factor to consider is the tempo of your music. Another study published in Frontiers in Psychology set out to find the effect of the tempo of music on endurance and high-intensity exercise performance. What they found was that higher tempo music (170-190bpm) had a significant effect on RPE as you can see from the table below.³
Figure 1: Patania, Vittoria Maria, et al. (2020)
You’ll also see, while there was a difference in perceived exertion during high intensity exercise, it wasn’t nearly as effective as while during an endurance exercise.
Here’s where it starts to get even more interesting. The original study I referenced in the first section said that “Preference for both high tempo and loud volume music have been shown to be increased during high intensity exercise”.⁴ So, while Figure 1 doesn’t show a dramatic difference, there still is something to be said for blasting some metal or faster paced EDM when pushing yourself during a workout.
The limits of how effective this can be were discussed in another study published, which stated that a difference in effort or fatigue couldn’t be found during a 30-second all-out cycling test.⁵ This may mean that the effects of music can hit a limit to how much it affects the processing of your body’s sensory cues. In other words, it’s possible that if you’re pushing yourself to the absolute limit (think along the lines of Tabata), what’s playing in your earbuds isn’t going to make a whole lot of difference because your body can only process so much input. But where it continues to shine is for longer-length sessions.
Going The Distance
So, as we’ve already covered, music can help you shut out some of your body’s stimuli, telling you that you should be getting tired. The same study referenced directly above found that in a group of 25 males and 25 females aged 19-25, exercise duration increased dramatically when listening to music versus without.
Figure 2: Thakare, Avinash E, et al. (2017)
While there wasn’t an exact number given, the music played was “fast and loud.”⁶ If you’re not convinced by now that music can be a performance enhancer, especially when it comes to endurance activities, I don’t know how else to prove it to you.
What To Listen To
According to all the studies above, music that has faster BPM played at a higher level is the way to go. But if you can’t stand Metallica with every fiber of your being, you’re not going to have a great time working out with them blasting. Anecdotally, I’ve heard some people swear by listening to smooth jazz or R&B during a workout. Others can workout for hours listening to classical music. I even know people whose gym playlists are purely video game music.
Personally, I think it’s really going to come down to music that you connect with. When I’m lifting, I want to listen to AC/DC, Queens of The Stone Age, and other bands with a faster tempo. When it comes to cardio, some of the best jogs I’ve been on were while I was listening to Pink Floyd, a notoriously slow-tempo band.
Conclusion
If you take anything away from this article, know that listening to music can improve your workout. The significance is going to depend on what type of exercise is being performed and what you’re listening to. If you’re anything like me, you have your workout playlist queued up before you even walk into the gym.
We’re curious to know what kind of music motivates you in the gym. Drop links in the comments below to your favorite Spotify gym playlists to help others get the most out of their workouts!
References
Ballmann, Christopher G. “The Influence of Music Preference on Exercise Responses and Performance: A Review.” Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology, vol. 6, no. 2, 8 Apr. 2021, p. 33, dx.doi.org/10.3390%2Fjfmk6020033, https://doi.org/10.3390/jfmk6020033.
Ballmann, Christopher G. “The Influence of Music Preference on Exercise Responses and Performance: A Review.” Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology, vol. 6, no. 2, 8 Apr. 2021, p. 33, dx.doi.org/10.3390%2Fjfmk6020033, https://doi.org/10.3390/jfmk6020033.
Patania, Vittoria Maria, et al. “The Psychophysiological Effects of Different Tempo Music on Endurance versus High-Intensity Performances.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 11, no. 74, 5 Feb. 2020, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7013107/, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00074.
Ballmann, Christopher G. “The Influence of Music Preference on Exercise Responses and Performance: A Review.” Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology, vol. 6, no. 2, 8 Apr. 2021, p. 33, dx.doi.org/10.3390%2Fjfmk6020033, https://doi.org/10.3390/jfmk6020033.
Thakare, Avinash E, et al. “Effect of Music Tempo on Exercise Performance and Heart Rate among Young Adults.” International Journal of Physiology, Pathophysiology and Pharmacology, vol. 9, no. 2, 15 Apr. 2017, pp. 35–39, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5435671/.
Thakare, Avinash E, et al. “Effect of Music Tempo on Exercise Performance and Heart Rate among Young Adults.” International Journal of Physiology, Pathophysiology and Pharmacology, vol. 9, no. 2, 15 Apr. 2017, pp. 35–39, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5435671/.
