"Let's Get Physical"

   

Physical activity inspired by music

As I place my key into the keyhole the door knob turns, I open the door and walk forward into rejuvenation.  This once a garage transformed into an exercise room with a treadmill, weight bench and hand held workout equipment.  Now that I have escaped the outside world, I put in my headphones in each ear and turn on my ipod.  The music enhances the atmosphere creating in me a sense of happiness and comfort.  Every doubt that pressed down on my shoulders seemed to fade as my limbs started to become light as a feather.   I reached out and grabbed hold of the free weights moving effortlessly along to the beat.  I stretched breathing in filling my lungs and slowly exhaled.  In that moment I felt  young and full of energy.

      Let's Get Physical: The Psychology of Effective Workout Music: New research clarifies why music and exercise make such a good team, and how to create an optimal workout playlist. March 20, 2013 |By Ferris Jabr  http://www.scientificamerican.com

     According to a study published earlier this month, the relationship between music and physical exertion may be more complicated than we initially thought. It isn't just listening to music that drowns out our pain and exhaustion, asserts lead researcher Tom Fritz. The process of creating and controlling music in time to one's exercise improves the experience even more.

Source:  http://www.scientificamerican.com

Significance

     Here we present a data set demonstrating that musical agency greatly decreases the perceived exertion during strenuous activity. We believe these findings are a major contribution to how we consider the role of music in the emergence of human societies. Furthermore, these findings are timely because they crucially help to understand the therapeutic power of music, a scientific field about to unfold. Although one would expect this workout with musical feedback (jymmin') to be a rather unconventional and dimensionally constrained (each instrument one-dimensionally regulates a musical signal) way to experience musical agency, the experience of the performers suggests an intimate entwinement of ecstatic pleasure and exertion during the performance.

Abstract

      Music is known to be capable of reducing perceived exertion during strenuous physical activity.  The current interpretation of this modulating effect of music is that music may be perceived as a diversion from unpleasant proprioceptive sensations that go along with exhaustion.   Here we investigated the effects of music on perceived exertion during a physically strenuous task, varying musical agency, a task that relies on the experience of body proprioception, rather than simply diverting from it.  For this we measured psychologically indicated exertion during physical workout with and without musical agency while simultaneously acquiring metabolic values with spirometry.  Results showed that musical agency significantly decreased perceived exertion during workout, indicating that musical agency may actually facilitate physically strenuous activities.   Furthermore, this finding suggests that the down-modulating effect of musical agency on perceived exertion may be a previously unacknowledged driving force for the development of music in humans: making music makes strenuous physical activities less exhausting.

• Author contributions: T.H.F., M. Demey, and M.L. designed research; T.H.F., M.N., and O.G. performed research; M. Demoucron, M.N., Y.L., and J.-D.H. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; T.H.F. and S.H. analyzed data; and T.H.F., S.H., and A.V. wrote the paper.