Grooving at the gym

If it wasn’t already welded together, music became irretrievably linked to exercise when Olivia Newton John released her lycra-spandex single, “Physical” and accompanied it without suitable amounts of gyrating complete with headband, leotard, and leg-warmers. Fifty years ago exercise classes meant high white ankle socks, barked instructions from a Sergeant-Major type, and suffering in silence. Today you can’t find a gym class that doesn’t run to the accompaniment of boom-boom beats and even if exercising alone people will usually be ear-plugged in to their i-tunes source. This connection of exercise and music may have another evolutionary step to go though, since a new study has shown that under certain conditions music can really boost physical performance.

For the new study researchers had one group of subjects exercise with music playing in the background. Another group exercised on machines that had been rigged to produce music when the participants used them. The faster they worked out, the more up-tempo the music would go and the more intricate the music became. This is known as “jymmin’”; a combination of the words “gym” and “jamming”.

During the tests the researchers measured oxygen intake, muscle tension changes, and asked the subjects how much they felt they were exerting themselves.

The results showed that when the subjects were producing the music themselves they felt the strain of their workouts with less intensity. Additionally, when the subjects were making the music themselves their muscles used less energy so that they were more effective physiologically.

In all, generating music that matches your exercise pattern makes physical exertion less exhausting. It’s not proven at all but it seems logical that some music may be more suitable than others. For example, rather than Jackson Brown’s “Running on Empty” you might want to opt for Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run”.