Is running with music beneficial?

This article is inspired by the research findings of Professor Peter Terry.

Let’s start with a case study, Haile Gebrselassie- 10,000 metre gold medalist at both the Olympic Games (Sydney 200 and Atlanta 1996) and the world championships (1993, 1995, 1997, and 1999). Type his name into Google followed by the word ‘music’ and the number of results (last time I checked) was 270,000, to say it is common knowledge of his preference, would be an understatement.

Birmingham 1998 and Gebrselassie is just about to run the 2000m at an indoor event when ‘Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop)’ by ‘Scatman John’ starts booming through the speakers. After the initial confusion, four minutes fifty two seconds later Halie had a personal best and a new world record was set. However, the IAAF later erased this record for ‘cheating’, suggesting there is some basis to the argument that running with music is beneficial?

Switching sports quickly, a problem triathlete’s encounter is getting off of their bikes and running too quickly. This is because of the speed they reach whilst on the bike, when they get off they perceive themselves to be going too slow, they then run faster and tire quicker. To counter this, many triathletes sing to themselves to keep good pace- further evidence supporting the use of music.

Professor Peter Terry conducted a study looking at cyclists in an all-day cycling event (i.e. twenty four or more hours); the cyclists either heard an audiobook or motivational music. Arount the 18 and 24 hour mark, the motivational music group were lapping (400m track) twenty seconds faster than the audiobook group. Professor Terry and colleagues also performed a meta-analysis of 100 studies and found that there was a .28 benefit for those exercising and a .35 benefit for those in a sporting condition (a match for example). For this study it showed: music was better than no music and that music in a sporting condition produced better results than just general exercise.

From this research, Terry was able to conclude that there were benefits of music and he placed them in order of occurrence (what is experienced by athletes the most):
                - 1) Psychological benefits: feelings are more positive and the overall mood is better
                - 2) Physical benefits: actual benefits of music, an example being Gebrselassie, you run faster
                - 3) Perceived exertion: you feel as if you have not worked that hard because the upbeat music suggests you too are upbeat and have a lot of energy left.
                - 4) Physiological benefits: better blood flow for example, this can actually happen as music can relax the body and produce this better flow of blood. There are two types of music that can be used when exercising: synchronously, timing the music to your running tempo and asynchronously which is any music.

Lastly, looking at the ergogenic benefits of music, Peter Terry’s study found by slowly increasing the music tempo, the athlete increased their speed with no perceived exertion. So, the athlete was able to work harder but did not actually think they were! Linking in with this, an upbeat song that makes you feel more upbeat is known as emotion contagion; Terry believed this was happening during the running. Movement contagion however, is where the music is reflected in your dance/movement, so for example, in Brazil the ‘samba’ is a very popular dance move and you will see several soccer players dance the ‘samba’ to celebrate. This dance is supposedly reflected in the Brazilian play which is typically: free, effortless and skillful. Next time you’re playing soccer and you’re losing, wack on some ‘Scattman’ over the speakers, dance the samba and within five minutes you’ll be winning.