So what effect does music have on your workout? Quite a bit, science says.
- In 2002, the U.S. Sports Academy found that subjects listening to two techno songs on headphones ran 5 percent to 9 percent faster than when not listening to music.
- Researchers at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania found that music inspired a better workout on stationary bikes than white noise.
- It even makes you a better conversationlist. An Ohio State University study found in 2004 that listening to music while exercising increased verbal skills afterward.
That's why runners freaked when the USA Track & Field's announcement announced a few years ago that it would ban iPods and other music-listening devices in its races. They were banned not because music gave some runners an unfair advantage, but because officials decided that blocking out surrounding sounds was unsafe for runners.
That said, what's the best song to work out to? An article in the New York Times asked that last year. Basically, songs with tempos of 120 to 140 beats per minute are the ideal. That's roughly the heartbeat of a casual exerciser who's been on the treadmill for 20 minutes. Salt-N-Pepa's "Push It," Snoop Dogg's "Drop It Like It's Hot" and Rihanna's "Umbrella" fall in this range.
Anyway, this is all a long introduction to something I just saw on Brainiac, the blog of the Boston Globe's Christopher Shea. It's Yamaha's BodiBeat, a device that monitors your heart rate and synchronizes your music to match your rate. So its starts out, presumably, with slower songs and picks up the pace as you work up a sweat. I suppose it could also serve as something of a hazard alert - if your headphones start pumping out Slayer's "Necrophobic" (248 BPM), you may want to take a break.