Can Listening to Music Improve Performance?

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Posted 8/24/2009

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Did you know that listening to music can improve your performance? In fact One study showed healthy volunteers who listened to music at various tempos while they exercised on stationary bicycles found the cyclist’s speed increased as the tempo of the music increased.

This translates to the running and walking world as well. One of the key elements to running/walking economically is to improve stride tempo, or the number of times your feet hit the ground every minute. In doing so, you increase the economy stride for stride and use less energy allowing you to walk or run faster with less effort. Many of us can improve our economy by making just a few changes to our form. Here's how...

Find your stride rate: First, take inventory of your strides per minute, or the number of times your feet hit the ground. This will give you a sense of where you are economy wise, and a solid number from which to progress. The number one contributor to lower efficiency is over-striding or taking too long of a stride step for step. Doing so can actually put on the breaks every time you take a step and you then have to regenerate the momentum. The goal is to glide step for step and listening to the tempo of music can help you move more efficiently.

During your next walk or run, count the number of times your right foot hits the ground in one minute. It is best to count towards the middle of your workout when your body is properly warmed up and on tempo. This is your stride rate. For example, if you counted 75 steps on your right foot, your rate is 150 (both feet).

Find Music to Match Your Tempo: Next, find music at the same tempo as your stride rate. There are free apllications like the iTunes BPM Inspector you can use with iTunes to manually tap out the beat to determine the beats per minute tempo. If that sounds like too much work, there is an application for $19 called BPRer that will automatically determine the BPM for every song in your library and even mix them without breaks in between! It comes with a free trial offer to see if you enjoy it enough to purchase it. If your stride rate is 140, find music at 140 beats per minute. Walker tend to be around the 110-150 range while runners vary from 160-180. Remember to check out my weekly BeeWell Miles Music every week. Many of the songs I highlight are in the higher BPM range and highly motivating to move to!

Dial Up The Tempo: Once per week, walk or run to music that is slightly faster than your current beats per minute. If you're normally at 150, listen to music at 155. As you increase the tempo (beats per minute), modify your form by taking shorter, quicker steps. Doing so, can improve your momentum, decrease the stopping forces if you're over-striding and improve performance. The important element is to remember to shorten your stride. If you don't, the effort level will seem way to hard! This may feel awkward at first, but your body will learn to adapt and the miles will fly by as you jam to new tempo of your music.

Happy Trails,

Coach Jenny

Learn Why Bee Active is an important part of the BeeWell for Life Program