Can Music Help Your Cycling Performance?

If music is the soundtrack of our lives, it is also the lifesaver for indoor training. While everybody grooves to their own drummer, is there an actual ergogenic effect from playing music during intense efforts? And what can studying music and exercise tell us about how we psychologically cope with intense efforts?

Music is an elemental and integral form of human expression that has been around since the hunting-gathering days of yore, since about the time our caveman forebears regaled his buddies around the campfire about how he survived a tussle with a sabre-tooth tiger. And since the advent of portable music devices, they have increasingly become a part of the athlete's wardrobe. So while we do not officially condone or endorse it, music is a common companion for many cyclists when riding outdoors.

Ask most riders, and they will tell you that music is fun to have while exercising. But does it just provide a psychological lift, or is there an actual physiological or ergogenic benefit from cranking the tunes?

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As is often the case in sport science, a lot of research ideas come about from observing what athletes are up to, and then designing a study to prove whether there is an actual scientific basis for it. In this case we're going to talk music, but the same athlete observation and subsequent scientific testing applies to many other examples, from legal but scientifically invalid (e.g. using Breath-Right snoring nose strips to improve ventilation) through to illegal but scientifically valid (e.g. blood doping, EPO)

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Move to the Music

The experimental setup was as follows:

• Sixteen active young adults, not specifically trained cyclists.
• A 10K time trial test on a cycle ergometer in typical room temperature and humidity conditions. All subjects familiarized themselves with the time trial effort in order to remove the "learning effect".
• In the "control" condition, the 10K time trial was done without music.
• In the music condition, "trance" music with a consistent tempo of 142 beats per minute, at a volume of 87 decibels, was played throughout the 10 km TT. Importantly, the music was mixed by a DJ specifically for this experiment, such that the subjects, though familiar with the genre of trance music, had no direct prior knowledge or anticipation due to actual familiarity with the music itself.

Besides the direct effects of music on overall time to completion for the 10K time trial, the nice thing about using a time trial is the ability to explore pacing strategies. So we might see the exact same overall time and average power output, but the pattern of pacing may be completely different.

And with this study, the authors hoped to explore the mechanisms by which music may improve performance. Namely, one theory is that music helps by dissociating or distracting the individual from the sensations of effort and fatigue. If such a mechanism is valid, what we should see is that, in the music condition, as the time trial progresses and fatigue accumulates, power should be higher while perceived effort remains the same.

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We've Got the Beat

So what did we see in the data?

? Mean power output (243 vs. 232W) and race speed (35.0 vs 34.1 km/h) were both significantly higher with music than without.

? Not surprisingly given the above, the time trial was faster (1,030 vs. 1,052 seconds) with music.

? Interestingly, mean heart rate was higher (172 vs 165 bpm) with music, and the mean rating of perceived exertion (RPE) was also higher (14.9 vs. 14.1 on a scale from 6-20) with music.

? Breaking down the pattern over the 10K time trial, most of the improvements from the music came about in the first 3K, with higher speeds and heart rates. Following the first 3K, speed was pretty much identical between the music and control conditions, and this suggests that music mainly stimulated or primed the subjects for higher starting levels, possibly by increasing their arousal.

In contrast, the lack of difference in the speed or power output in the latter stages of the time trial would go against the theory that music benefits performance by distracting the subjects. The higher ratings of perceived exertion and heart rates in the early stages of the time trial also suggests that the subjects were fully cognizant that they were working harder right from the start of the time trial.

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Taking the Show on Tour

So what are the things we can take away from this study? First off, I hope this demonstrates that science can be pretty light-hearted and fun, while at the same time useful!

? Remember, we do not condone wearing earphones while cycling, given all the loony drivers and other road obstacles out there. But if you're riding a time trial and have radio communications with a support vehicle, or if you're indoors riding a hard interval workout or a fitness test, then crank it loud!

? The subjects self-reported their perceptions of the music, and rated the rhythmic qualities of the music as the most notable factor, ahead of other parameters such as "musicality" or the harmony or melody. This suggests that, unless you really get a dig out of ballads, music with a strong and fast rhythm are preferred over the singer's actual vocal ability or even whether the lyrics make any sense.

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