New Research Reveals: Listening to Music While Running Can Make You Faster and Reduce Fatigue
Is it suitable to listen to music while running? This has been a long-standing and controversial topic. However, without a doubt, music is like shoes for runners.
'Music is the most legitimate stimulant for running.' This is a sentence summarized by sports psychology doctor Kostas Karageorgios after 20 years of research on sports and music.
And on February 2nd, the Italian Institute also demonstrated this assertion through a series of comparative experiments, which was published in the open journal Psychological Frontiers.
Music can make running more efficient
Is it suitable to listen to music while running? This is an ongoing debate. Both sides have always presented evidence to support their views.
In early February of this year, Professor Luca P. Ardigò of the University of Verona came to a conclusion through a comparison experiment: listening to fast-paced music or helping to reduce people's fatigue and enhance exercise effects.
According to the research report, the researchers at the University of Verona asked 19 women aged 20-odd years old to run on a treadmill for 10 minutes or perform high-intensity exercise on a leg extension machine. The volunteers were randomly divided into 4 groups, and either listened to or did not listen to music during the exercise.
After the exercise, the researchers assessed various parameters, including heart rate and the amount of effort the volunteers felt needed to complete the exercise.
The results showed that compared with those who did not listen to music, female volunteers who listened to fast-paced music (with a rhythm of about 170 bpm) had the fastest heart rate and felt the least amount of effort to complete the exercise.
This means that 'exercise does not feel so laborious for them, but is more beneficial to improve physical fitness', because a higher heart rate means that exercise is more beneficial to physical health in large part.
'Compared to the control group that did not listen to music, listening to fast-paced music helped the runners' heart rate reach the highest, and they felt their exercise consumption was the least.' Luca P. Ardigò explained.
This research report was published on February 2nd in the open journal Psychological Frontiers, and demonstrated that the benefits of listening to fast-paced music in endurance sports such as running and brisk walking are more noticeable than in high-intensity exercises such as weightlifting and leg extension machine exercise.
Not only improves performance, but also accelerates recovery after running
Of course, Luca P. Ardigò also emphasized that this experiment was small in scale, and did not involve the difference in musical features such as melody, lyrics, and type, which may affect the exercise effect.
However, from very early on, many scientists have been on the side of music being beneficial to running.
In Kostas Karageorgios's newly published book Inside Sports Psychology, he mentioned that the reasonable use of music can increase a person's exercise performance by 10% to 15%.
At first glance, 10% doesn't seem like a big change. But if converted to marathon results, assuming a normal runner's full marathon time is 5 hours, 'reasonable use of music' may help him achieve a score of 4 hours and 36 minutes.
Of course, this data is not made up by Kostas Karageorgios, he conducted an experiment – inviting 15 amateur male runners with similar levels to undergo a 30-week experiment. The runners needed to undergo a series of tests and training, and ran 5 kilometers on a 400-meter track. The results showed that runners who listened to slow or fast songs, they arrived at the destination time difference was not much, the average is 26 minutes and 5 seconds, and 26 minutes 5 seconds respectively; in the case of not listening to music, the average arrival time is 27 minutes and 19 seconds. From the research data, it can be found that running while listening to music can help runners enter the state, which is very helpful.
'Before running, or even before any sport, soothing music can relax stress, and rhythmically strong music can arouse a sense of competition. From the mental state, enter the state of sports.' Karageorgios explained.
In addition, Kostas Karageorgios also said in an interview with Runner's Worldthat after running, do not immediately take off the headphones, soothing slow songs can speed up the recovery of the body.
'Compared to the people who did not listen to music after running, listening to songs can help the heart rate return to normal faster.' Karageorgios said, 'Under the influence of music, the body's water replenishment, nutrient absorption and internal circulation will return to the state before running faster.'
Listening to music has principles, safety is the first priority”
However, it cannot be denied that anything has two sides.
Just as the research of the American Road Running Club shows that for top professional athletes, music may be a hindrance. Professional athletes need music to motivate them during training, they actually need to carefully listen to the heartbeat, breathing, footsteps and the unspoken messages of each muscle.
In addition, if the same music is repeatedly listened to, these melodies will lose their stimulating effect and sensitivity on the runners, which is called 'sensitization effect' by Kostas Karageorgios.
To avoid this situation, one way is to divide the running into three segments, two segments listen to music, one segment does not listen; or three training sessions, two listen to music, one does not listen. In addition, changing the music playlist every few weeks is also very important.
But many opponents believe that running while listening to music is a dangerous behavior.
If you listen to music while running, you may not hear the passing cars or people who are trying to remind you. Therefore, if you want to run on a busy or crowded road, it is best to take off the headphones with music playing.
