14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past few years, as personal music players have become more and more common and affordable, athletes around the world have started wearing their headphones during workouts, saying that their favorite tunes give them more energy, and make the long sessions seem to be funner. Exactly why this happens is still somewhat of a mystery, one that Brunel University sports psychologist Costas Karageorghis has been trying to understand for the last two decades, LiveScience reports.
His is not the first attempt to pinpoint the mechanisms and correlations that exist between what we hear and how we move, but investigations into this matter appear to be destined to fail. Karageorghis' studies have set the standard in the scientific community, however, providing other researchers with a starting point in conducting their own scientific studies.
The expert is also the creator of the “Run to the Beat” half marathon, which takes place in London annually. The investigator is trying to find the best possible mix of live music for all of the contestants, and has even compiled a list of scientifically selected songs that he believes are bound to make people move their feet in tune. Some 9,000 people participated in the competition last year, some of whom heard the music being played through loudspeakers, while the others listened to their music players.
In his studies, the expert has identified four basic traits that make music motivational – rhythm response, musicality, cultural impact and association. The first two are internal factors, as they pertain to that particular song, and belong to no other. The latter two are external factors, in that they depend solely on our personal interpretation of the music we hear. Among the things influencing our external factors, the expert includes our musical background and the preferences that we have developed over the years, for a certain artist, style, or genre.
“The synchronous application of music resulted in much higher endurance while the motivational qualities of the music impacted significantly on the interpretation of fatigue symptoms right up to the point of voluntary exhaustion,” Karageorghis believes.
The expert adds that synchronizing a song's rhythm and cadence, quantified as “beats per minute,” to one's heart's own beats leads to an overall increased efficiency in conducting a physical exercise. In fact, it has been demonstrated that some people require seven percent less oxygen during the same exercise when they listen to music, than when they simply do the routine without any “aids.” In a treadmill run, the same tests have shown that the brain subjected to synchronized music diminishes the body's perception of effort by as much as ten percent.