Wednesday Wisdom. The Right Music Makes Your Workouts More Effective

“Whether it’s Beyonce’s “Naughty Girl,” Taylor Swift’s “Untouchable” or Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” that inspires you to work out harder, listening to tunes during exercise is a proven way to boost your workout performance and duration.” The journal of Frontiers in Psychology

The faster the better, right?

High-tempo music — the type that equates to about 170 heartbeats per minute — reduces perceived effort and boosts cardiovascular benefits more than lower tempos, according to a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Music can arouse and boost mood

The study found music can arouse and boost mood before exercise, dampen perceptions of pain and fatigue during a workout, and inspire bursts of effort, performance and endurance.

“We found that listening to high-tempo music while exercising resulted in the highest heart rate and lowest perceived exertion compared with not listening to music. This means that the exercise seemed like less effort, but it was more beneficial in terms of enhancing physical fitness.”” said study author Luca Ardigò, a professor at the University of Verona in Italy.

Music effect greatest with endurance excercise

The study found the effects were greatest for endurance exercise, such as brisk walking, running, biking and swimming, than for high-intensity exercises such as weightlifting, jump roping, speed walking and high intensity interval training.

What should you do?

There are up tempo choices for any musical taste. Here are a few examples.

Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” is 171 BPM
Jay Z’s “Empire State of Mind” is 173 BPM
Beyonce’s “Naughty Girl” is 199 BPM
Taylor Swift’s “Untouchable” is 200 BPM
And while Moby’s “Thousand” is only listed at 137 BPM, it holds a Guinness World Record for climbing to a whopping 1,015 BPM

Build your own playlist based on the beats-per-minute, or BPM, of your favorite songs. There are plenty of online tools that can help you do this. Spotify, for example, allows you to plug in the song’s name and learn the tempo in one click. Other apps provide ready made lists of music by type of exercise and intensity.