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In the last week, two things got me thinking. First, I read an article about the FINA swimming world championships in Australia. It described Michael Phelps preparing for his 200-meter freestyle race:

Michael Phelps stood on the deck with 50 Cent blaring in one ear, a steely determination in both eyes. When his name was announced to the crowd at Rod Laver Arena, the young American did nothing more than stare down the strip of water at his feet.

Second, a friend of mine who goes by the moniker Kahuna writes a very entertaining blog for triathletes and posted an entry about his adventures going on a two hour bike ride in Palm Springs, California without his beloved iPod (the moral of his story being: iPod + Desert Heat = Silence).

Now I’ve had periods where I’ve trained listening to music and I’ve had periods where I’ve just listened to my thoughts or my breathing – whichever was loudest. But I began to wonder whether there was any scientific basis for using music to enhance performance.

And indeed there is.

A study by Elliott, Carr, and Savage in the June 2004 Journal of Sport Behavior examined the effects of motivational music on work output in cycling. The researchers had participants in their study cycle on a trainer for 12 minutes. They were asked to ride three times keeping their perceived exertion the same for each trial. In two of the trials, participants heard music. The “distance” traveled on the trainer was measured for each trial. As you may have guessed, those participants who listened to music “traveled” significantly farther -- up to 7/10th of a kilometer -- than those who didn’t.

Stuart Simpson and Costas Karageorghis researched the effects of music on runners performing a series of 400 meter sprint trials. Those sprinters who ran listening to music turned in faster times than those who didn’t. The researchers concluded that even in anaerobic tasks, music can have a strong impact on performance.

These results and those of previous studies also seem to support the idea that music can increase aerobic endurance, increase isometric muscle endurance, reduce perceptions of effort, and induce flow-states before and during an athletic task. Simpson and Karageorghis even go so far as to maintain that, “music is a genuine ergogenic aid.”

Quick get me my headphones!

But if music is good, is all music equally good? Will listening to Beyonce help me as much as cranking up the Bach? Should I choose Modest Mouse or Mozart? Does what I listen to really matter?

Not really, so long as it has a good beat.

Researchers maintain that rhythm is the most important element of choosing music for sport- and exercise-related tasks – more so than familiarity and any associations you might have to a song (e.g., senior prom theme, first song you _______ed to, any song from any Grateful Dead concert you attended).

It seems that humans have a predisposition to respond to the rhythmical elements of music, particularly music that also has a fast tempo (greater than 120 bpm). Give us a beat and will march (or run or cycle or dance) right along to it. The faster the beat, the faster we’ll go.

Sounds good, no? But let me throw out one word of caution drawn from my experience working with athletes. While I’ve got no research to back this up, I’ve noticed one potentially serious downside to training with music (other than not being able to hear approaching traffic!). Music can easily distract us from listening to our own natural breathing patterns. If we are not used to hearing how we breathe – especially when we are exerting ourselves at our max – we are liable to be surprised by and even anxious about how “bad” we can sound. So, if you do listen do music, make sure you do some of your speed-work sans-headphones so that you can get used to the noise of your own huffing and puffing.

In the meantime, get out the iPod, find a remix of your favorite song (remember 120 bpm or more) and get your groove on!

Enough from me. Your turn.

Do you train with music? Does it help? What’s on your current playlist? Any favorite songs to recommend to the Sportsminded blog readers?