by Ben Greenfield

Over at the Get-Fit Guy Facebook page and Get-Fit Guy Twitter page, I recently asked all you listeners what your top workout songs are when you want to exercise harder or just get out the door in the first place.

Click here for the list of tunes that you came up with, which range from Will Smith to AC/DC! But now that you have the crucial tunes for getting you moving, how can you use music to exercise harder? In this article, you’ll get the best workout songs and workout music, you’ll find out whether music makes you exercise harder,  and you’ll learn 3 ways to get a better body with workout music.

Do Workout Songs and Music Make You Exercise Harder?

In 2010, British researches had 12 men ride a bike while listening to music. During each 25 minute bicycling session, the researches adjusted the tempo of the music to go 10% faster or 10% slower. They found that speeding up the music program increased how far the participants rode and how hard and how fast they pedaled, and slowing down the music had just the opposite effect!

Interestingly, the study participants actually reported liking the music more when it was played at a faster tempo. A 2008 study that was also performed on cyclists found that it was far easier for the cyclists to pedal when they were following the tempo, or beat, of the music.

Furthermore, another 2009 study found that basketball players could shoot better free throws when they listened to catchy, upbeat music. Researchers have suggested that the same positive distraction that helped those basketball players shoot better can also distract us from fatigue or pain experienced during exercise.

Finally, in 2003, researchers observed that people who listened to music during exercise actually improved their mood, the speed of their decision-making processes, and even their verbal fluency. That means you’ll not only be able to exercise harder when you listen to music, but you may actually get smarter too!

But beware: once you get up to very high intensities, studies have shown that music doesn’t provide any additional benefit--so if you’re trying to set a marathon world record, sneaking in a pair of headphones probably won’t help. And also beware that participants playing music on headphones is outlawed in many sporting events.

How Does Music Motivate You To Exercise?

The mechanisms of how music motivates you to exercise harder are actually not entirely clear. However, it is known that there are two elements at play:

  1. the ability of music to distract your attention on pain and fatigue, which could be described as a psychological effect; and

  2. the ability of music to increase heart rate and breathing, which could be called the physiological effect.

Together, these two components make you exercise harder and hurt less.

3 Ways to Use Music When You Work Out

Now that you know workout music can make you exercise harder, or put you in a better mood and motivate you to exercise in the first place, how can you use it? Here are 3 ways to get a better body with work out music:

  1. Do intervals. After a hard day of work, when your brain is tired and you don’t want to think during a workout, you can hop on the treadmill or bike, throw on your favorite album, or even a brand new album you haven’t heard before, and simply go easy during the verse and hard during the chorus, or easy during the slow songs and hard during the up-tempo songs.

  2. Save the music. The tricky thing about music is that just like caffeine, you can become desensitized to it if you use it too much to get motivated. So you can grab a podcast (such as any of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcasts) and listen to them for most of your workout and then, when the going gets tough or during those last parts of the workout, put on your music and finish up with a bang!

  3. Get motivated by the music. Imagine you’re driving home from work and you know you’re supposed to go to the gym. But going home for dinner and TV seems so much more appealing. Try this: turn on your favorite motivational workout music and pump up the volume. That can cause just enough adrenaline release to make you veer off-course and head for the gym!

And be sure to sign up for the free Get-Fit Guy newsletter, where I just published an article entitled “3 Good Ways To Listen To Work Out Music”. Do you have other ways that you use music? Share them with others at the Get-Fit Guy Facebook page.