One good thing about music , when it hits you, you feel no pain
Bob Marley
I tend to listen to music all the time (except while writing this post, ironically). I almost always have music on at home; I listen to music while working (unless I’m working on some very tricky piece of code, then silence is needed); I listen to music as I walk alone in the streets; I listen to music when exercising, no matter what type of exercising (running alone, hitting the gym, going to classes…). To say the truth, it’s not just that I like having music while exercising, I actually need it to push myself and make it through the workout. Why is that?
Before understanding why music is so important while exercising (not only to me, a lot of people have reported feeling the same way), let’s first go back to basics. What is music? One definition describes music as an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, and harmony. Couple of important elements are in this definition: first, music is dynamic, it has a duration in time; second, it means something to the listener, it conveys a message, but each listener could have their own understanding of what that message is (i.e. it talks differently to each of us); the difference between music and noise resides in the perceived cohesion between the sounds produced within the piece. It is not enough for a group of sounds to be produced rhythmically, they need to be combined in such a way pleasant to the ear. For a music to be perceived as “good”, it doesn’t really matter what sounds are produced, if there is vocals as well as instruments; the only things that matters is the rhythm and the harmony one finds in the piece, it is the cohesion between the sounds. Then, it becomes music.
If you’re a singer, you might think that I have no idea what I’m talking about (which might be very true…) and that the lyrics are as important as anything, and sounds alone don’t make a good song… Or don’t they? Don’t we all have a memory of a song with very (very) poor lyrics that still got stuck in our head for hours or that we surprised ourselves humming in a moment of daydreaming? That’s what I thought. Those songs didn’t get stuck in our head because the lyrics were easy to understand; they did get stuck in our head because we remembered the rhythm. The best commercial songs are not based on meaningful lyrics; they have a good rhythm and lyrics that emphasise that rhythm. You remember the rhythm before you learn the lyrics. It’s all about that beat…
Rhythm might have such an important place in music because there is rhythm everywhere, a living functional being is made of rhythms. If we take the example of the human body: the heart beats on a very specific rhythm, proper to a given person in a given situation; the contraction of the digestive system is rhythmic; the blood circulates through the body following a specific beat – the one given by the heart; neurons in the brain fire rhythmically to process all the information provided by the environment and allow the good operation of the whole body. We are rhythm. It is then fairly intuitive to understand then why music can affect us: when two rhythmic systems are put in contact, they tend to influence each other, trying to impose their rhythm to each other. If on a physical point of view it seems intuitive indeed, researchers had a very hard time understanding the mechanisms explaining how music could impact us and what exact observable effects it could have on the brain. One thing we now do seem to understand is the impact of music on the brain during exercising.
Exercising is not always the nicest feeling in the world (rarely is actually…): your body start hacking, your muscles are tired, it requires an increasing effort to repeat the same move over and over again, your body starts shaking, and you’re almost always sure to have sore muscles in the next few days. I won’t dwell on why we do it (cf. “How I became a gym rat”), I will focus here on the how. There is an obvious muscular component to that answer, the more you train, the more strength you build on, the more you will be able to do. Admittedly. But where do you find the motivation to push your body to complete exhaustion? You probably guessed – in the music. Whether you actively pay attention or not to the music playing while exercising, the rhythm played will impact your workout. It can for example tempt you to move on the beat, it can make you run faster, it can increase your heart beat. You don’t even have to know what is playing for it to impact your workout. But music is key.
This fact is not really ground breaking – people realised that over the years, which is why there is music playing in most gyms and music industries have been producing workout songs and remixes of popular songs to workout on. And guess what is the key component of those workout songs? The beat per minute (BPM), or in other words, the rhythm. A rap-song average at 80 BPM; dance tracks average between 120 and 130 BPM; workout songs usually have above 150 BPM.
Known fact: music makes you move. What’s new though is a recent research looking at the impact of music on the brain (for some pure science, follow the link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167876018301417). Music has an effect on a specific brain region, reducing negative sensation in the body, and allowing us to have better control over our muscles. It acts a bit like an override message saying: “I know you’re tired, but it’s not that bad, see? Keep pushing!”. Music is processed by the same area of the brain that deals with internal sensations (i.e. muscle soreness) and it seems to be able to switch the focus from internal sensation onto external stimuli. In other words, it makes you forget your pain for a while. Listening to music can reduce your focus on the immediate environment but gives you a kick of energy and increases your enjoyment. It makes you feel good.
Working out, any type of physical activity really, reduces your stress level and stimulates your emotional brain. It’s good for you, no question asked. Training improves your physical health and your ability.. but you’ll never push yourself as hard as when you train with music.
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