Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of Jose Goulao

October 15th, 2008 – According to LiveScience, a sport psychologist at Brunel University in England helped create a danceable “soundtrack” for runners in a recent half-marathon. Apparently many of the runners felt the soundtrack invigorated the race.

Professional runners, according to the report, “use music as a legal drug”. Before races, they listen to laid-back music, and then during the race, more upbeat tunes. Interestingly, the effects of music on your performance may not work as well if the music is always there. The suggestion is to listen to music twice for every one time you don’t. I imagine that if you listen to music all the time, you would eventually just tune it out. This might defeat the actual song being an influence, but I’m sure that you would still sub-consciously sync to the beat. For example, sometimes I notice that my breathing matches the rhythm of air conditioning units. Or maybe I’m just a freak.

So sports medicine is finally catching up to what music therapists, child psychologists, musicians, fans, heck, pretty much what everyone already knows. There’s no better representative than the rave kids…although it might be all that E.

via LiveScience