Winning Combo: Muscle and Music : Athletes Appear to Do Better Listening to Favorite Songs

Right after hearing Mick Jagger sing “Start Me Up,” Olympic triple jumper Willie Banks set an indoor world record. Just moments after listening to a Whitney Houston song, he broke the world outdoor record.

“It’s almost like I’m on a music drug,” he said. “The music helps get my movements in a groove. It relaxes me so I can tune out distractions.”

Eight-time world champion diver Greg Louganis runs, bicycles and lifts weights to music. Immediately before he won gold medals in the 1984 Olympics, he played “Believe in Yourself” from “The Wiz.”

“It’s a lot easier to ignore pain and fatigue with music on during a workout,” Louganis said. “Even without music going, I play songs mentally. It’s like having a jukebox in your head.”

Ever notice how much better you exercise to music? How calisthenics are less tiring? How your run is more fun? How your rowing gets into a rhythm? So have many elite athletes such as Banks and Louganis.

That music makes us want to move is nothing new. Amazon River Indians sing rowing chants, and Army marchers bark cadence calls to power repetitive efforts. But now music is gaining popularity as a training tool.

Enhancing Performance

New research shows that music influences how we exercise, can enhance our athletic performance, and offers numerous fitness benefits. Working out to the right music can:

- Encourage you to stick with an exercise program and deepen your pleasure in doing so.

- Lower fatigue and pain enough to make you push harder with apparently less effort.

- Boost stamina, regulate your breathing and promote better muscular coordination.

NASA, for example, believes that music may psych us up for workouts. The agency plans to provide music in space to help astronauts get more out of exercise. The astronauts expect to run on a treadmill and pedal away on a recumbent bicycle ergometer for about 90 minutes a day while listening to personal music tapes on portable headsets.

“We see music as an extra incentive to exercise, and as a way to ensure compliance with a routine,” said Dr. Donald Stewart, a NASA flight surgeon. “Music is a diversion that makes exercise less tedious, more pleasant. And the meter of the music may be critical in promoting a certain intensity of exercise.”

Relieve Mental Stress

Researchers at Ohio State University have found that music may relieve the mental stress of exercise. Nine men aged 19 to 30 ran on treadmills for 30 minutes at 70% of maximum capacity. First they listened to upbeat rock music (Diana Ross, Michael Jackson) over portable stereo headsets, then ran without music. Those who ran with musical accompaniment felt they had exerted themselves less--and had significantly lower levels of beta-endorphin, a natural opiate the brain releases in response to stress or pain.

Pharmacologist Gopi A. Tejwani, who collaborated on the study, believes that such musical accompaniment may enable us to tune out stress such as our own pounding heartbeat and heavy breathing. “Because the runners perceived the exercise as less intensive,” he explains, “the body reacted biochemically and produced less pain killer. Our study suggests that music lowers the psychological stress of exercise.”

A recent study at Stanford University Medical Center furnishes a clue to why we prefer performing physical activities--whether painting an apartment or folding laundry--with rhythmic music in the background. Researchers measured muscle activity as 24 women aged 18 to 35 put pegs inside holes to both even and uneven musical rhythms. The even rhythm apparently made the biceps and triceps flex and extend more smoothly and efficiently than the uneven one.

Certain musical rhythms can stimulate physical movement and improve muscular coordination, according to the Stanford experiment. Muscle contractions become shorter, sharper. Muscle units fire in sequence. Once you repeatedly perform a given motion to a beat, the body can practically go on automatic.

Streamlining Movements

A 10-week program for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health confirmed that we can streamline our movements through music. Twenty participants listened to the syncopated two-beat of cha cha and bossa nova music while receiving instructions in how to walk properly. At first they moved awkwardly and out of sync. But quickening the music from 60 beats per minute to 80, then to 100 and more, made everyone walk faster, more fluidly.

“We wanted the patients to develop a sense of rhythm in order to improve walking performance,” said Dr. Ira Grenadir, a Boston sports medicine specialist who supervised the experiment. “And the more they listened, the better they kept in step. They also reported feeling more comfortable and light-footed. They translated the music into movement.”

At the New York University School of Medicine, a recent study revealed that music also can get your breathing into a rhythm. Twenty subjects listened to everything from Beethoven to Earl (Fatha) Hines. Result: a tight correlation for most subjects between rhythm and breathing.

Interestingly, the 10 subjects with formal musical training better coordinated rhythm and breathing than those without such backgrounds. The researchers concluded that musical experience “reinforces our innate potential” to let music influence our physical functions--a process called entrainment. The more you listen to music, the better you may synchronize your breathing--and thus your movements--to a given rhythm.

Smooth music with even phrases and predictable rhythms is ideal for slow stretches and cool-downs, said Raul Espinosa, president of Music in Motion, in Alameda, which provides tapes to many aerobics centers. On the other hand, disruptive music with extreme swings in melody and rhythm can throw off our movement and make our bodies tense, he said.