Music for Sports: Pacemaker or Distraction?
It should no longer be a secret for you that you can significantly influence your training success with the right attitude, healthy nutrition and good equipment. The music that comes out of your headphones is also said to increase physical performance.
In fact, musical sounds get some of the processes in your body rolling. Music doesn’t just go through the ears. Music can measurably influence the heart, vessels, respiration, immune system and even the muscles.
When training for a competition and become the latest news on cricket, you can take advantage of the positive effects of music.
The effect of music before sport
It’s been proven that music already has an effect before you start exercising. For example, quiet music helps you to concentrate and focus better, but also to relieve tension and excitement. If music triggers positive emotions associated with power and strength, a lot of happiness hormones, the so-called endorphins, and adrenaline are released. This significantly increases motivation for the upcoming training session.
Positive effects of music while running
Music doesn’t just unfold its effect before training. It gets really exciting during sporting activities. There are many aspects that suggest that listening to music during training has positive effects on performance.
- With the help of suitable beats, your will and your motivation will grow.
- Music helps to improve your mood, even if your training isn’t going so well.
- Music can help you keep the beat. When running, it is possible to adjust breathing, heart rate and step frequency to the rhythm of the music and thus control it.
Running music as a distraction strategy
In this context, music often acts as a distraction strategy. Listening to music during a sporting activity influences one’s own body perception in such a way that the perception of stress is reduced. In other words, music causes you to perceive signals from your body, such as the sensation of stress, exhaustion and pain, less intensively. You can explain this phenomenon by the fact that you do not receive any acoustic feedback about your physical condition. Through music, you literally ignore signals, such as heavy breathing, an increased heart rate or strong heart palpitations. Athletes therefore perceive the training as less strenuous.
You must enjoy these positive effects with caution. Motivating music also increases the willingness to take risks. There is a danger of overdoing it and overshooting the target because you hardly notice the signals from your body. This is one of the reasons why most ambitious athletes prefer to train without music. The fewer distractions you have during training, the more you can concentrate on running technique, heart rate control and more.