You really can’t do it anymore. You’ve been panting for kilometers after your own ambition and wondering when the suffering will finally end. And then Bruce Springsteen’s headphones boom Born to Run or Can’t Stop by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and suddenly it works. Your legs get lighter, your steps get bigger – and is that a smile?!
This is not a random runner’s high, but rather a listener’s high, a feeling of high that is thanks to the music – and therefore can be planned.
Researchers from various disciplines have been studying the influence of music on sporting performance for over a hundred years. As early as 1911, cyclists were allowed to compete in a six-day race accompanied by a military orchestra and their speed was examined. Later, comparative tests were carried out on weightlifters. Last analyzed scientists again all these investigations, studies, tests and surveys (139 in number) to find out what a good song can really do.
One of these scientists is Costas Karageorghis, professor of sport and exercise psychology at Brunel University in London and author of the book “Applying Music in Exercise and Sport”. Not only has he been researching the influence of music in sports for 30 years, but he has also worked directly with athletes. His most important insight: You can benefit from music in all sports. You just have to know how to use them correctly. Even without professional support, you can create the optimal playlist if you consider the following points.
What does music bring to sports?
Music influences two main things: the feeling of fatigue and the mood. This applies to all sports. Karageorghis describes this as a distraction effect: when you listen to music, you concentrate less on how your own body feels. Added to this is the mood-enhancing effect of music. “That’s the central thing,” says Karageorghis. “How you feel during and immediately after exercise is crucial to affective memory.” This means that if you are in a good mood during and immediately after exercise, you will save it and will then be more likely to exercise again. In this respect, music also has an effect on your personal best performance: those who train regularly ultimately become fitter.
By the way, music also helps before and after training. Before exercising, music can help motivate and focus. During competitions you often see professional athletes running into the hall with headphones on, sometimes completely immersed in the music.
After exercise, music can help you calm down more quickly. This is what a group of scientists from Spain and Brazil found out. Her Investigation has shown that the vagus nerve is activated by music after a running session. It also stimulates the prefrontal cortex, the control center of the brain, and can thus contribute to regeneration. In fact, breathing, heartbeat, and even the immune system can be influenced by music.
Who benefits from music while exercising?
The vast majority of people can benefit from music while exercising. At least when they want to direct their concentration outwards, away from what they are actually doing. About 80 percent of people who go to the gym are looking for exactly that, says Karageorghis: something to distract them from the stress of exercise.
However, there are also people who want to focus fully on themselves and their body while exercising. To do this, they need a low-stimulus environment and therefore find music more disturbing. Karageorghis calls these people “Associators” and those who use music to distract themselves “Dissociators”.
Most people are a mixture of both, the scientist explains: They can adapt their focus to the situation. You can test which category you belong to by training sometimes with and sometimes without music.
In which sports does music particularly help?
The effect of music is particularly great during endurance training. Run, Ride a bike and other sporting activities with even, rhythmic movements are ideal. The movement sequences are so simple and consistent that you don’t get out of sync with a song, but on the contrary you can even get into the flow with the music.
With one caveat: the distraction effect and the fact that it’s harder to perceive ambient noise with headphones make listening to music risky, especially when cycling on public roads. “Music can have an intoxicating effect. Then you not only ignore fatigue, but also everything else: the traffic, the street rules…” says Karageorghis. But music is perfect when stationary cycling or jogging on the treadmill or in the park. Music can also be helpful during fitness training. However, it depends on what exactly is being trained and with what intensity.
During extreme exertion, for example, the brain has to process so many signals and stimuli that there is hardly any room left for further external stimuli, explains Karageorghis. This means that music can help with endurance runs and other long-term endurance runs, but not with short bursts of effort close to your own limit, such as sprints. “Even if people believe that music pushes them in moments like this, that’s simply not true.”
Even with other high-intensity activities such as this Weightlifting there’s no point in listening to music. Especially because the focus here is inward: you have to feel your own body, check whether you are standing and gripping correctly, and breathe calmly. Only at low and medium intensity does music have a small effect on exercises such as bench presses or squats.
What music should you listen to – and when?
If you just want to distract yourself from your own exhaustion, you can hear practically everything. Research shows: everything from ABBA to Frank Zappa works, including Bizet and Beyoncé. Even music you don’t like helps. However, when it comes to getting in a good mood, Karageorghis says: “One man’s music is another man’s noise.”
That’s why when he works with athletes to find the ideal music for their training, he shows them their music library. Based on this, he then looks for suitable songs – for before, during and after sport.
When it comes to influencing your mood, Karageorghis recommends songs that evoke motivating associations. A classic like this can do that Eye of the Tiger be from Survivor. But the emotional connection to the song can also be more personal. Karageorghis remembers a successful heptathlete named Jenny who wanted to switch to pole vaulting. Before her first competition, he put together a video for her of successful training jumps and accompanied the whole thing with Jennifer Lopez’s Jenny from the Block. “The message of the song is: I’m still the old Jenny,” he says, “I wanted to give her confidence in her abilities as a competitive athlete.” Jenny, says Karageorghis, won a medal.
So lyrics are important?
The scientist is convinced of this. “Texts can confirm, motivate, strengthen the ego,” he says. That a boxer like Chris Eubank with Tina Turners The Best arrived, makes sense to him. The last thing Eubank heard before a fight was: You’re the best.
For example, Karageorghis recommends that a weightlifter do this before a competition Push it from Salt-N-Pepa. There are a whole range of suitable songs for running: Run to You by Bryan Adams, Where Are We? Running by Lenny Kravitz or of course Born to run by Bruce Springsteen.
Do tempo and rhythm not matter at all?
If you use music primarily to distract or motivate yourself, you don’t have to pay particular attention to the rhythm and you can even listen to music with different BPM, i.e. beats per minute. Listening to songs with a higher BPM during more strenuous workouts doesn’t help. On the contrary: anything over 140 BPM is rather overwhelming. The “sweet spot” for all training intensities is 120 to 140 BPM, says Karageorghis. Songs like fall into this spectrum Born This Way by Lady Gaga or Gimme Some More by Busta Rhymes.
Especially when running or cycling, you can also use music as a rhythmic cue, so choose it so that you train to the beat. But that’s complicated, says Karageorghis. The typical stride rate of a runner is between 150 and 180 BPM, which is rather higher than that of most songs. “Sometimes it may feel synchronous for a short time, but that is rarely the case,” says the researcher from London. In addition, the songs, which have around 160 BPM, are simply “too much to process”. This applies to many EDM tracks, but also to heavy metal songs. “The brain is overloaded when it has to do sports,” he says. Just think about it Witchcraft by Pendulum.
Karageorghis therefore recommends looking for songs with a BPM number of 75 to 90 BPM. In this rhythm, you can go through an entire step cycle per beat, i.e. from the moment your heel touches the ground to the moment it next touches the ground.
“Rap is actually the perfect music for running,” says Karageorghis: “relatively slow tempo, but rhythmically there’s a lot going on, the songs are often energetic.” In Da Club For example, 50 cents is 90 BPM, Praise the Lord (Da Shine) by A$AP Rocky and Skepta at 80 BPM.
Okay, and which songs are on the playlist now?
Of course, if you don’t like rap, you don’t have to force yourself to do laps in the park listening to Eminem. Especially for amateur athletes, the music that makes them feel comfortable is best. That’s why Karageorghis advises against including songs in the playlist that tend to evoke negative feelings. “In theory, you think that a song that reminds you of your mean ex will help because it makes you angry,” he says. However, contrary to what is often assumed, anger does not necessarily promote performance. There is one exception: “In martial arts, it can make sense to reflect on your own anger.” With competitive athletes, he often thinks about what mix of emotions is associated with top performance for them and then tries to reproduce this with visualizations and careful choice of music. He also recommends this to amateur athletes. “You should ask yourself: How do I want to feel when I train?”
If you are looking for inspiration for your own playlist: As part of this research, we asked some German professional athletes which songs they particularly like to listen to and why. Among other things, we have MMA fighter Christian Jungwirththe Judoka Anna-Maria Wagner and Olympic swimming champion Lukas Märtens reveal their favorite songs. You can find the complete list here.
