Think it doesn’t matter if you listen to the Rolling Stones on your morning jogs? Think again. Ongoing research by a team of Elon University professors shows that what’s in your iPod can impact the quality – and duration – of your workouts.
The team is conducting ongoing research into the effects – both psychological and physical – of the music people select for exercise. In specific terms, researchers are looking at all “distractions,” but data shows that most people favor iPods or other digital music devices over TV.
It turns out that listening to music makes people feel better about getting their heart rate going. What it doesn’t appear to do, however, is make people work harder to achieve better results. And not all distractions are created equal. In fact, watching television, as opposed to music, while exercising a treadmill or bike can be worse than not having any entertainment at all.
“We found that people self-selected pretty low exercise intensities,” said Paul Miller, a professor of exercise science who, along with Wally Bixby, Eric Hall, and Liz Bailey, has been working on the distraction research. “They certainly were not working harder, and, in some cases, they may have been so distracted from the task that they may have actually been working less.”
Their findings have been presented at recent conferences of the American College of Sports Medicine.
Plenty of research exists into the type of music people listen to while exercising. What the Elon professors wanted to answer was whether the distraction itself had any effect on exercise habits and, if so, how it impacted workouts.
Why is their work important? For starters, it’s no secret that America is battling what some nutritionists call an obesity “epidemic,” with a growing national waistline that promises to affect the number of people suffering from heart disease, diabetes and cancer in the coming decades.
“People who are apt to exercise will figure out a way to set aside time to get things done,” Miller said. “We need to aim research at those who are not apt to exercise and target the development of effective strategies that will facilitate their participation. People tend to feel better after they have exercised; the key is to identify a way for people feel better during the exercise. It is generally accepted that exercise adherence goes up when people feel better while they are exercising.”
“While setting a goal to lose weight is important,” Hall said, “people need to take that next step and say, ‘I want to be a healthier person.’”
The distraction research began with a research methods course Miller taught several years ago. As part of a class assignment, students started compiling data on the use of iPods, something that they had noticed when Miller encouraged them to observe behavior in the gym. That work has grown into a full line of research that is already evolving.
Miller, Hall, Bixby, Bailey and professor Joyce Davis are now in various stages of planning new projects that are tied into the distraction research. That includes a look at whether music distraction can extend how long people are willing to exert themselves once they pass the point of “ventilatory threshold” – where exercise becomes uncomfortable, if not painful.