Do You Need Music to Workout?
Written by TJ O’Brien
Imagine this: you’re at the gym taking a group class. You’re preparing to do a long workout consisting of rowing, kettlebell swings, burpees, and box jumps. You’ve got all of your equipment set up everyone is headed to a rower to begin. Your coach heads towards the front of the room to set the timer and turn on some music. As you see them scrolling through Pandora stations, you pray for your favorite one. Take a moment and consider the question, “what is your favorite type of music to work out to?” And does the type change depending on the task at hand, the length of the workout, the time of day?
But more importantly, what if the above hypothetical ended in Coach playing nothing at all? With only the whirr of the rowing machines, and the breathing of you and your classmates to make up the surrounding soundscape – would you go absolutely bonkers?
As a coach, I find myself in the position of class DJ a lot. Sometimes as I’m heading up to turn on some music, a member will say something like “put on something good!” In this context I presume good to mean “high BPM,” but what if I put on some classical or ambient trans? Would I see a considerable drop-off in performance, and if so, why?
Why are some of us so reliant on music to work out? I think most would say that it provides us with some motivation – good songs make us want to bop our heads and that inherent impulse to move proves useful during exercise. Others might say that it provides a distraction – we can settle into a good song instead of thinking of the pain we’re experiencing mid-WOD.
As I was writing this, I learned that Invictus Downtown manager and coach, Kim McLaughlin, did her Master’s thesis on this very subject. Her results? Music provided no significant boost in performance during high-intensity interval training. As she put it, “basically, people are moving too quickly and intensely to really be hearing the music.”
So if the music is blasting and you aren’t really hearing it, then what does it provide? I posit that the loud music provides a sympathetic nervous system response – think fight or flight – which prepares and sort of scares us at a biological level to get some work done. BUT I think that relying on this for motivation doesn’t set us up well for applying our fitness in any arena other than a tightly controlled class environment where we can blast our favorite tunes. Additionally, I’d say that it can take us out of the moment, causing us to lose our focus on our breathing or our movement.
Personally, I listen to music when I work out, but it’s not always the typical rap or EDM that often gets played in class. I find I’m able to keep my heart rate, breathing, and mind under control if the tempo of my music is slower. I’ll listen to some instrumental chillwave, ambient electronica, or even some of Philip Glass’ more epic tracks (yes, that’s a modern classical composer).
A challenge: Try out some songs with lower beats per minute than you typically would during your next workout and see if it changes your mindset or approach. If it’s the case that you hate it and crave the energy of your usual tracks, could that mean that your levels of intrinsic motivation are low? Is that okay for a day? Sure it is, but I have heard more than one elite CrossFitter interviewed on the subject (OG Josh Everett, and Josh Bridges) to learn that they don’t listen to music because they “don’t need it.” Maybe one day, we’ll all get to that level, but for now, slow down your BPM and you’ll hopefully see a boost in your concentration, movement quality, and mental toughness.