Heather: Music can have a dramatic influence on our focus, on how we move and obviously
our overall mood. The question is, should we use it for running? If so, how? I'm going
to be looking at the pros and the cons of running with music today, as well as speaking
to an expert to do my best to answer that question.
[music] I have to start off by putting my hands up
and saying that I am fairly neutral on this one, as personally, I don't actually run with
music for various reasons which I'll describe later on. I thought I'd start with the pros,
basically covering what I'm missing out on. [music]
Performance. Yes, music has been proven to improve performance, which is a big claim
I know. It does depend on the type of music, but we'll look into that more when we speak
to the expert later on. I'm sure if you've ever done a live event or a race and there's
been live music, a band or a DJ playing then you will have experienced that lift, whether
you realized it at the time or not, I bet you got a benefit from it.
[music] It can help cancel out distractions and get
you in the zone, eliminating any outside thoughts as you lose yourself in your favorite tracks.
I know a lot of you guys don't like to hear the sound of your breathing when you're working
hard, or maybe your feet pounding on the ground. It's a great way of eliminating this. Music
is also a brilliant way to get you in the mood before you go for a run. I personally
listen to upbeat tunes just to help get me motivated, because often getting out of the
house is the hardest part of a run altogether. Now for our final pro point on the list. What
if you don't like structure, or you don't want to think when you're out running. You
just want to go and lose yourself and not look at your watch or follow a set program.
Then why not allow music to help dictate your running, and just break things up a little
bit. For example, you could use the structure of a song so you could run steady on the verse,
and you can run really hard on the chorus of each song if your song suits that.
Alternatively, you could simply just do one song fairly steady, one song at a higher tempo.
If you want to take it a step further, you could even structure a playlist that's going
to work so you don't think about it. You just follow that, and your tempo should change
naturally. [music]
It's time to look at the cons and I'm not being a party pooper, I'm just wanting to
show both sides of this debate. Our first con is the fact that you have to carry something
extra to play your music on, whether that's your phone, an iPod or something similar.
It's one more thing to remember. I know quite a few of you will probably carry a phone anyway.
If you don't and you want to know how to carry a phone, then check out the video we've done
on that recently. Like I say, it's just one more thing to have
to think about before you head out of the house. Headphones pose a similar problem,
it's one more thing to think about and to carry. Actually, it's been my biggest barrier
to running with music, because I just can't find any the work for me. The in-ear headphones
with a cable are constantly popping out, I even resorted to taping them in at some point.
You've obviously got the option of over the head earphones or even noise-canceling ones,
but it's an extra weight to carry and they can get rather hot and sweaty.
Recently, I have experimented with ear pods, the in-ear pods which seemed to be okay. I
do have to re-adjust them a little bit, but I just have that forever fear of them popping
out into the undergrowth and never to be found again.
[music] Running is a great form of escapism and I
know a lot of people use music to escape. If you've got the opportunity to run somewhere
like this in the countryside, then going without music just lets you appreciate your surroundings
a little bit more. Obviously, you see quite a lot, but when you've got these sounds and
the smells to add to that, you can embrace the experience so much more.
Another point, running with music can be a little anti-social. If you're passing people
it's hard to say hello or hear what they're saying back. If you're running in a group,
then I personally find running with music actually quite rude, because you might as
well run on your own if you're completely canceled off to those around you.
[music] We're almost there, but as an important one
I need to cover and that is safety. Running with music cancels out that perception that
you have from things around you. Fair enough, if you're running somewhere that's really
open, and there's nobody else around, but if you're even running on cycle paths or [unintelligible
00:04:08] other runners, you won't hear people wanting to pass.
If you're near roads, then it really does become serious because you just won't hear
cars coming behind you. This is part of the reason that you're not allowed to use music
in quite a few events or races, as you just won't hear the other runners around you especially
in a mass participation event. If you're used to continually training or doing all of your
sessions with your own playlist, and you suddenly come to an event and you can't use music.
It's going to be a bit of a shock to the system. It's good to practice without if you know
you've got something like that coming up. [music]
Final one, I promised. Earlier, I mentioned that music can help you run faster, but it
can actually limit your running. If say you're at a set tempo, that your cadence is following
the tempo of your track. Then that can limit you from actually adapting your tempo if you're
going uphill, downhill or you're doing different [unintelligible 00:04:53] It might be subconscious,
but it could be notable. [music]
Enough of my thoughts, it's time to get scientific. Earlier, I caught up with Professor Costas
Karageorghis from Brunel University, who has spent over 25 years researching the impact
of music on athletic performance. I wanted to look at the numbers. I started off by asking
him, how much of an effect can music actually have?
[music] Costas: We've been looking at running performance
over the last quarter of a century or so. It seems that when people who are recreationally
active use music and synchronize their stride rate with the music, there can be a performance
benefit in the range of 10% to 15%. It's not to be sniffed at, but at the elite levels,
clearly those athletes have better develop motor programs. They're able to regulate their
movement patterns more effectively. Music has less of a gravitational pull.
I think it's more for those who are participating at the recreational level, the sub elite level,
who are likely to derive the most performance benefits from music relative to those operating
at the elite level. Heather: Can it ever be detrimental? Could
music actually make your performance worse in any way?
Costas: Absolutely, it can on numerous grounds. For example, if you've become accustomed to
training on a regular basis with music, and then that music is taken away in a competitive
context just like any other mild stimulant that you might use. That would have a detrimental
effect, because you might be dependent on that music to elevate your mood, or to reduce
your perceived exertion or to function as a sort of metronome. When you haven't got
it in the competitive arena, that can have a detrimental effect.
I always tell athletes, at the very minimum, to train with music for two sessions but to
do at least one high-intensity session without music, so that when it comes to race day they're
adequately prepared psychologically. The other thing, interestingly, when you combine very
loud music with high intensity running, that has the propensity to cause damage to the
inner ear, to the cochlea, the shell like part of the inner ear. That is lined with
follicles with hairs, and when we're running at a high intensity the blood flows away from
the inner ear towards the working muscles, and leaves those follicles more susceptible
to damage from the vibrations of the sound. Not a lot of people know about this, but using
music during high-intensity activity can cause tinnitus. It can cause vestibulopathy, it
can cause temporary hearing loss or it can cause more permanent hearing loss if the music
is used in a long duration. Heather: That's quite scary, I had no idea.
I imagine a lot of our viewers wouldn't know that either. Going back to the positives,
how, and this is a very broad question, but can we use music effectively? How do we get
these benefits that you talked about earlier from music?
Costas: I think the first thing is that people think unit dimensionally about how they use
music. They tend to use it while they're running, while they're circuit training, while they're
engaged in a particular activity, whatever that is. What our research has uncovered over
the last quarter of a century, is that many of the benefits of music can be reaped before
you start performing in terms of the music engendering the right mindset. Many athletes
use music either to pep themselves up as a psych up strategy, or if they're feeling anxious
about an upcoming competition, it can be used to reduce or to ameliorate anxiety.
There's that whole pre-performance thing going on that athletes are able to tap. Music is
an extremely effective means of ensuring that you feel the master of your own destiny, that
you set the pattern of your pre-event routine. That you create a mood and an arousal state
that you associate with peak performance, so that's pre-performance. During performance,
you can use the music in two main ways. One is asynchronously, that is where the music
is playing in the background, but you're not consciously sinking your movement rate to
the rhythmical qualities of the music. Used in this way, music can elevate your mood.
It elevates positive aspects of mood such as vigor, happiness and excitement. It can
reduce negative aspects such as tension, depression, anxiety. It can also be used synchronously.
Now, this is where you consciously synchronize your movement rate to the rhythmical qualities
of music. This takes a little bit of preparation, clearly. When I work with athletes, you'll
often see me on the back of a quad bike with a digital camera filming the athletes at different
running Tempe. Then working with the athlete, going through their music library and assigning
specific tracks to specific types of running workout.
Now, generally what I try to do is select pieces of music, and I seek those into a music
program that is one or two BPM above the athletes comfort range. That gives them a little jolt,
a little push. They're working harder, but the increase work crate is imperceptible in
terms of their perceived exertion, how they process fatigue. They get an ergogenic effect,
but they have no negative psychological consequence. That is the asynchronous and the synchronous.
Asynchronous, anybody can use it easy. The synchronous takes a little bit of preparation,
albeit with modern apps. It's very easy now to use a technique known
as passive synchronization, where the music essentially will follow your stride rate.
That is an advanced that's been made with modern technology, and we can take advantage
of this using a smart phone. Now, the third type of application that runners don't know
a lot about is the recuperative, or the post task application. Much of our research over
the last five years has centered on whether music applications can expedite or speed up
the recovery process. We look at hemodynamic indices, such as heart
rate and blood pressure. We look at psychobiological outcomes, such as salivary cortisol. We measure
mood. We take a range of subjective measures. In some, when we've done this type of research,
it shows that the music can have a significant effect in terms of speeding up recovery. Particularly
in terms of reducing hemodynamic indices, such as heart rate back down to what's homeostasis
or a resting state. Most significantly of all, it seems that a
really vigorous workout can do some bad things to our mood state. It can lead to us feeling
pretty grotty, particularly when we've thrashed ourselves. Music can help in returning us
to a very positive mood, a mood of revitalization, feeling re-energized and ready for whatever
might lie ahead in the day. Generally speaking, the subjective responses and the subjective
measures tend to yield more positive outcomes with music, the more objective measures.
Heather: This might be a really silly question, but how does one actually know what the BPM
of a song is? Is that easy to find? Costas: Actually, that's relatively easy to
find. A fail safe way to do it is to play the track, and then to tap out the beat for
20 seconds and to multiply that by three. For example, if you tap out 40 beats in 20
seconds, multiply that by three you get 120 BPM. Which is a very common tempo in popular
music. If you're not comfortable with the tap method, which you can do without any technology,
or you can use a tapping app. There's an abundance of those available online, very easy to find
with Google. You can also go into any DJ website, type
in the title of the track and the artist, and it will provide you with a BPM. There
are multiple ways of finding out that information. Often when I'm constructing playlists for
athletes, I'll use multiple forms of establishing the BPM so that I'm absolutely sure. The funny
thing about BPM, is that it can be felt differently by different people. If you take a really
classic track like I'm a Believer by The Monkees, some people will feel that at 160 BPM, and
others feel it at 80 BPM. There is a little bit of variance. It's important that when
you're helping somebody select music, they're easily able to extract the beats or the meter
for whatever it is they're going to use it for.
Heather: That's fascinating. Thanks so much for your time, Costas.
Costas: It's been great speaking with you. Heather: Some really fascinating stuff there.
I didn't know there was so much science behind running with music, and I could have spoken
to Costas all day. Like he said, it doesn't even have to be purely for your run. You could
use music to get you in the mood beforehand, or how you wind down afterwards. Maybe if
you don't want to run with music all the time, you just choose it for those key sessions
to help you get that extra percentage out. If you'd rather listen to your body on those,
then keep it for your easy runs and see it as a treat. You can listen to maybe a whole
album for that. There's also scenarios which are better suited than others. For example,
running on the treadmill in the gym is great, because there's no distractions. You're not
going to have to talk to anyone. You can put your phone down, so you wouldn't even need
to carry it. If however you're out on the country lanes, then you probably want to run
with maybe just one ear in, so you can at least hear traffic. If a car stopped behind,
it could be a bit embarrassing if they've got a hoot their horn to waken you up.
It doesn’t solely have to be music that you rely on for a distraction. Why not listen
to a podcast or an audio book? If you're feeling brave, even learn a new language whilst you're
running. There's no harm in multitasking, is there? I personally love a podcast, but
those in-depth ones I keep for my super easy run so I can fully concentrate. If you are
going really easy, there's nothing wrong in taking a phone call. It's just the same as
chatting to a friend whilst out running, as long as you warn your recipient, and they
don't mind heavy breathing down the other end of the line.
That is it for the day. There was quite a lot of science there, which I wasn't expecting
and I found it fascinating. Hopefully, you've enjoyed it. It's definitely made me want to
go and experiment with music. Maybe I'll try and run another five k hard at some point
on the treadmill and see if that can give me the extra boost. Let me know how you guys
use music in your training, if you do at all. If you've been inspired by this video, remember
to give us a like if you have enjoyed it. Check out our social media channels, and follow
those too. [00:17:03] [END OF AUDIO]