What Type Of Music Is Best For Running

Do you find the steady repetitive beat of electronic music helps you keep your feet in rhythm, or do you much prefer to float by on some classic melodies? 

As it’s the year 2018 and we have pretty much studied everything so far, it won’t surprise you that extensive studies have taken place to find which type of music is best to motivate runners.

You may think that ‘The Eye of The Tiger’ would be a much more apt tune to motivate your run, rather than say, some Chopan or Mozart, but could it be that both provide a similar platform for motivation? Whilst plenty of older studies suggested that fast music was the best for improving athletic performance in both elite and recreational athletes, a new study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning research shows that a tune’s tempo has less importance than whether the listener simply finds a song motivational or not.

The study was simple; 15 male runners ran three all-out 5ks, one whilst listening to slow motivational songs (80-100 bpm), one whilst listening to faster tracks (140-160 bpm) and one with no music at all.

Overall, each runner moved faster with music than without, specifically in the first 5k. But the difference in finish times showed no significant change whether the music was fast or slow.

The most important thing that researchers took away from the study was that because runners chose their own playlists, the feelings of motivation were based more on what the song ‘meant’ to the runner rather than the beats per minute.

So basically the bottom line is, load up your player with your favourite jams. It doesn’t matter if it’s Eminem or Enya, hell, you can even listen to ‘Baby Shark’ song on a loop - as long as it helps you with your running event times, who the hell cares!