How does your workout playlist help you get pumped? Scientists explain how music affects your brain during exercise.
According to Science, listening to music naturally relieves pain and helps people move faster. While working out, your favourite jam actually helps the brain produce feel-good chemicals such as dopamine and opioids - which could ease muscle pains, helping you feel more motivated and less tired.
"There are two possible mechanisms, and we haven't sorted them out yet," said neuroscientist and This Is Your Brain On Music author Dr. Daniel Levitin in an email to The Huffington Post. "Either music acts as a distractor (and distractors are known to modulate pain levels - this is why combat soldiers don't always realize they've been shot until after a busy maneuver is over) or music acts as a mood enhancer (because the release of endogenous mu-opioids and other mood-enhancing chemicals raises the pain threshold)."
Moreover, the tempo of the music also synchronizes the brain neurons - making people perform repetitive exercises such as running more quickly.
Another study published in the journal Sports Medicine-Open last May supports these findings by showing how listening to music during a workout maintain an active exercise pace.
For the research, 34 cardiac rehab patients were grouped into three to perform an assigned exercise program. The first group completed the exercises without listening to music; the second group did the work-out while listening to audio devices playing random tracks; while the third group listened to a specific playlist enhancing tempo-pace synchronization for their workout duration.
Results show that those in the third group pushed further on their workout time, spending an average of 261.1 minutes more than the other groups.
"If this average increase of exercise was sustained for an average 65-year-old male patient, it would correlate with a projected life-expectancy increase of two and a half years," said Toronto Rehabilitation Institute's senior scientist and the study's lead author Dr. David Alter in a statement.
Huffington Post added that other studies were also conducted proving fast-paced music could push cyclists to work harder as well.
