How Does Music Affect Athletic Performance

Madison Lellyo
Artist in Society
November 1, 2015 Music Effects on Athletic Performance
Music to enhance one’s athletic performance during sports and exercise has become an important area of study. Music is often thought of as almost a performance-enhancing drug because of the advantages it may give to an athletes’ performance. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the beneficial effects that music can have on athletic performance and to provide examples from research. Music can benefit performance because it controls arousal rates, elevates moods, reduces exertion rates, creates dissociation from pain and fatigue, creates synchronization, enhances ability to learn motor skills and creates flow states.

Synchronous music is beneficial
Famous Ethiopian distance runner Haile Gebrelassic set the indoor 2000-metre record through by synchronizing his movements with music, matching his stride perfectly to the rhythm of the pop song “Scatman.” Synchronizing allows runners to match up the tempo with their desired stride. Tempo is theorized to be a key component to how music will affect athletic performance. Research has shown that majority of people prefer to listen to fast tempo music while they exercise over slow tempo music. To prove if this theory is true, Karageorghis, Jones, and Low preformed an experiment comparing participants heart rate to their preferred tempo. The participants had the option of either low, medium, or fast tempo music. The participants went through three trials of walking on the treadmill. The first trial tested 40% of maximal heart rate. The second trial tested 60% of maximal heart rate. The third trail tested at 75% of maximal heart rate. The results from the experiment showed
Dissociation refers to the possibility of diverting the mind’s attention away from sensations of pain and fatigue. Research has shown that if one’s attention is not focused on feelings of fatigue that their level of work output increases. Dissociation benefits athletic performance because it narrows attention and allows the body to focus on the amount of information it is able to process. Therefore, if an athlete is focusing just on the music she can increase work output. Dissociation also creates a positive state of mind because it redirects attention away from physiological sensations of fatigue and pain. For example, it can cause someone to feel more energetic or happy rather than stressed, tired, or bored. The method of dissociation only works for exercises with low to moderate intensity. Once an athlete reaches a certain intensity the attention can no longer be redirected by music because the level of fatigue is too immense and therefore overrides the effect of music. This override results because focus is controlled by physiological responses such as respiration rate and blood lactate accumulation. Research has proven that dissociation causes a ten percent decrease in athletes perceived exertion while running at a low to moderate intensity on a treadmill ( Karageorghis & Terry, 1999; Nethery, 2002; Szmedra & Bacharach, 1998 ). Even though listening to music during high intensity doesn’t allow