Best gym music? That's for you to work out
LONDON: I have never been able to get fired up about yoga. This is largely due to the lack of pumping music. Yoga teachers either play ambient panpipes or nothing. Each minute seems to last an hour and my body complains bitterly about being stretched in unfeasible directions.
Such is my legacy from an earlier career teaching 20 hours of aerobics classes a week. I trained to be an instructor largely so I could have control of the stereo. Now I can't disassociate physical activity from banging house music at 140 beats per minute in 32-beat phrases.
This is not the lunatic dependency you might think. Music and exercise have long been proven to be symbiotic bedfellows. Dr Costas Karageorghis, a sports and exercise psychologist at Brunel University (and a musician), has spent more than a decade studying the link between athletic activity and music. He is also the architect of the Brunel Music Rating Inventory (BMRI), designed to rate the motivational qualities of music.
According to Karageorghis, we have an underlying predisposition to react to musical stimuli. "Music is beneficial," he explains, "as a result of the similarities between rhythm and human movement. The synchronisation of music with exercise consistently demonstrates increased levels of work output among exercise participants." Choose the right music and, according to Karageorghis, you can up your workout productivity by as much as 20 percent. For James Cracknell, the rower, the right music was the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik album, which he cites as playing an integral part in his pre-race preparation and, ultimately, Olympic victory.
But perhaps the most useful facet of music, especially a song with "motivational" melodies and lyrics, is that it allows even the humble gym-goer or runner to practice a technique used by elite athletes: disassociation. During repetitive exercise, music essentially diverts attention away from the sensation of fatigue. Blast away Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf, or Reach by S Club 7 during the high intensity cardiac phase, and you can almost persuade your body that you are in fact having a nice sit down and a latte. Songs don't always need to be predictably saccharine and upbeat though. I have a friend who swears by Bob Dylan when running.
Not everyone, however, shares the same taste in tunes. "Can you turn that racket down?" said a participant in one of my classes before storming out, objecting to a particularly hardcore Prodigy remix. Reaching a consensus on music is notoriously tricky, which makes communal exercise classes problematic.
There are some parameters followed by professional fitness instructors. We are taught about "appropriateness" on our Exercise to Music RSA basic fitness instructor training. Appropriateness to the type of class must over-ride any personal enthusiasm for a particular genre or artist, for example.
Essentially, we are taught that music should help participants get "in the zone", where they are working at around 80-85 percent of their maximum heart rate but are motivated enough to keep going.
Most importantly, though, the tempo should mirror your heartbeat. The instructor should align the music with the arc of the class, from the warm up, to high intensity, to cool down. It's good to emulate this when you work out alone, too. Cooling down to techno, for instance, will leave you feeling twitchy all day.
Some final words of advice: Enjoy the beat but don't let it consume you. Really good, motivational music can make exercisers forget where they are and I have witnessed a few people singing on the treadmill to their eternal shame. Let your favorite artist motivate you but don't try to become them. This month alone, I have already seen two women sweating in leotards and tights. Madonna has a lot to answer for.
The Guardian
(China Daily 03/06/2007 page18)
