Strength Through Joy?

Many people enjoy listening to music while working out. Lately I’ve been throwing on the MP3 player and going for a 24km bike ride around the river valley every day. Well, a recent study quantifies just how we respond to the beat.

The study participants were given categories of music to choose from so that they were listening to styles of music they actually like, then made to pedal on a stationary bike. This is actually an important psychological thing; when you’re subjected to music you don’t like, but aren’t free to change it or leave the room, it can drive you batty.

A little more than a decade ago I was given an MRI, and when the technician asked what sort of music I liked, I said “anything but country”. He was fiddling with switches at the time and only heard the “country” part, so for the next 45 minutes I was stuck in a huge magnet listening to Billy Ray Cyrus. if you happen to be a country fan, imagine the same thing happening to you with rave music or something.

Back to the cyclists in the study. During some sessions the music was slowed 10%. the participants would work out slower and wanted to stop sooner. During other sessions the music was sped up 10% and, you guessed it, the participants would work out faster and wanted to keep going.

Interestingly, they didn’t find the workouts at 10% above normal music speed to be any easier – in fact they said it was, in their estimation, about 2.4% harder (they were exercising faster, after all) but the bit about them wanting to keep going is the interesting part.

For myself, working out has been an important part of my recovery. More than 1/2 the body weight I lost during starvation was muscle mass and my metabolism slowed to preserve the fat stores I had left. Being active is building lean muscle tissue and bumping up my cardiovascular levels daily. The first increases my basal metabolic rate, as more muscle mass means more calories required to feed it, and the second has the “afterglow” effect of keeping my metabolism higher than it would be if I didn’t exercise.

This is the trick with building your body up from low levels of activity. If you go too hard, too fast you’ll be too stiff to continue – but if you go too lightly there’s no real point. Challenge yourself without hurting yourself. Audere est facere, as they say. To dare is to do.*

If you’re inactive or one of those people who goes for a walk or hits the gym once a week, but you want to either lose body fat or be able to walk up a few flights of stairs or go for a run without feeling like you’re going to die, ease into it with low impact stuff.

In my case I’ve gone from not having ridden a bike since I was 9 to doing 24km per day in just a couple of weeks, not because I’m some iron man (I’m working up to that but right now I’m more like an aluminum foil man) but because I go out there and do it, and as close to every day as possible. The music helps keep me motivated. Just pedal to the beat and before I know it, I’m done (and sometimes want to get back out and go again)

Long story short, if you’re having trouble staying motivated with your workout activities, load some of your favorite music onto whatever flavour of music player you have, make it upbeat tunes, and enjoy yourself.

*Which sounds more impressive and is easier to pronounce than the otherwise more practical Animadvertistine, ubicumque stes, fumum recta in faciem ferri, useful at barbecues, which translates as “Ever noticed how wherever you stand, the smoke goes right into your face?”