speed recovery by listening to music

recovery music
recovery music

recovery music: when building your post-workout playlist, calm tunes with no lyrics could be the way to go

Music has benefits before, during, and after a run. However, after that workout, not just any recovery music will do according to researchers at Brunel University in London. 20 to 30 minutes of “slow, sedative” music will speed up your recovery from a workout.

According to a press release, researchers used “upbeat pop tunes like Nicki Minaj’s Super Bass, Cinema by Benny Benassi and The Killers’ Mr. Brightside;” and also “sedative lyric-free tracks from a CD of music for hypnosis.”

From a post by Scott Douglass at Runner’s World:

42 university students (21 women, 21 men) did a cycling workout to exhaustion on three occasions. They concluded the workout with a brief cool-down of easy spinning (what the researchers called “active recovery”) and then sat in a comfortable chair for 30 minutes (“passive recovery”). The difference among the three workouts was that each student either listened to short, fast songs (around 130 beats per minute), longer, slower songs (around 70 beats per minute), or no music at all during the half-hour of passive recovery. The researchers measured the students’ levels of cortisol, a hormone that’s released in response to stress, as well as their overall emotional states.

The music with an “absorbing, non-syncopated music with a simple harmonic structure” achieved the results. Interestingly, the positive results were stronger among women than men.

“Music and post-exercise recovery is relatively unchartered territory in my field and I’m really excited by it,” said Dr Karageorghis. “We have a strong research foundation with which to build end-to-end music solutions and optimise how people the world over use music for exercise and health.”

You can read the research paper here: Psychological and Psychophysiological Effects of Recuperative Music Postexercise

 

Photo credit: Malte Wingen on Unsplash


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