 Can listening to music increase your cycling performance? This is the question we'll be addressing today by taking a look at the science. I'll also get into whether or not the tempo of the music and music preference plays a role, both while you're actually out riding and during a warmup. And finally, we'll get into whether or not listening to music while you ride is compromising your safety on the road. Welcome back to another video. Cyclist thoughts on listening to music while they ride can be pretty mixed. There are those who couldn't imagine leaving the house without earbuds in, and then on the other end of the spectrum, there are those that claim that you should just enjoy the ride without distractions or that listening to music while you ride is dangerous because you can't hear traffic. We'll get into that, but first, talking purely from a performance perspective, could you be leaving potential fitness on the table by leaving the headphones at home? Perhaps a good place to start would be by investigating how listening to music affects your cycling performance. This study on the effect of music on cycling work rate had subjects perform a 10 kilometer time trial with and without the presence of dance music. What they found was that music allowed subjects to ride at a higher speed, particularly at the beginning, as well as ride at a higher heart rate and perceived exertion. The improvement was roughly 2%. Now 2% on an endurance ride is not a very big deal, but for very high-intensity sessions where you wanna be performing as optimally as possible to eke out every little bit of fitness you can, this could make a real difference. That being said, other studies on the topic come up with mixed results. For example, this study also used a 10 kilometer time trial to test subjects when listening to music versus not and found no difference in performance between the two trials. And this is not the only study to show this, although it's not uncommon to see results where listening to music while it didn't increase performance, it did decrease perceived exertion and increase enjoyment. This study on the effect of lighting in music found that participants did not work harder when music was present. However, music in dimmed light may be used during such activities to heighten pleasure and reduce tiredness. Music in dimmed lights to heighten pleasure during such activities. Are you sure that study was about cycling? From these fairly basic studies where subjects perform time trials with and without music, I think that the best you could conclude is that results are mixed. However, music is really general. Are we talking about classical music, smooth jazz, screamo, mumble rap? These types of music couldn't sound more different. On top of this, what might the effect be of speeding up or slowing down the tempo or how much the subjects actually enjoy listening to the music being played? These are all potential confounding factors, but luckily for us, they've been tested. This study investigating the effect of music tempo on cycling performance had subjects perform a submaximal test when music tempo was normal, increased by 10% or decreased by 10%. Sure enough, they found that speeding up the music increased distance covered, power and cadence. Slowing down the music did the exact opposite and on top of this, subjects enjoyed faster tempo music more when exercising. The takeaway, don't listen to Sam Smith when you go out on a ride because you're probably gonna feel more like crying alone on the couch as opposed to busting out the wads. Choose high tempo music that gets you pumped or if you wanna get really fancy, customize a playlist that plays the highest tempo music during your intervals. Believe it or not, there is research suggesting that this may be the most optimal strategy. For example, this study on differentiated music on time trial performance tested no music versus music played during the first half of a TT versus music played in the second half of a TT. They found that subjects rode over one kilometer per hour faster when music was introduced. This study had subjects perform an increasing workload test to exhaustion with slow music, fast music, music that increased in tempo throughout the test and music that decreased in tempo. What they found was that increasing the music tempo with the test resulted in a significantly higher workload over the other conditions. Going from slower tempo music during the warmup to higher tempo music during the intervals may be even more beneficial. Personally, I have two playlists. One is the normal riding playlist and one is the go hard playlist with nothing but high tempo songs to get me in the mood to crush a workout. Yeah, man, I've got my cycling computer program to start playing Metallica every time I hit a Strava segment. On recovery days, I just play your videos on loop and it makes me wanna take a nap instead. Another important factor here is music enjoyment. Listening to songs that you already know and like versus some random pump up playlist on Spotify with songs that you don't know and may or may not like could be the difference of a couple watts in your next workout. This study put this to the test by having subjects perform testing sessions while listening to preferred music, non-preferred music and no music. What they found was that listening to preferred music increased the distance covered by over two kilometers. And despite this, the rate of perceived exertion was actually lower when listening to preferred music. This is probably common sense but make sure that your riding playlist is filled with songs that you actually like and not ones that you're gonna wanna skip as soon as they come on. If you're in the middle of an interval, you may not be able to skip it and that may affect your output. Here's another question, do lyrics matter? Does a song having lyrics increase your performance or is all you need a high tempo beat? This study tested just that, having subjects perform a cycling test while listening to music with lyrics, the same music without lyrics or no music at all. Interestingly enough, subjects rode at a higher cadence particularly towards the end of the time trial when lyrics were present and this is not the only study that finds a cadence change when listening to music. This study on running while listening to music found that as the tempo of the music increased, so too did the subjects running cadence. All right, up until this point, we've been talking about the effect of listening to music while you're riding. But what about during a warmup? It's not uncommon when you go to a race to see riders warming up with headphones on, trying to get primed for the start. But does listening to music during the warmup have the same effect as listening to music while you're actually riding? This study on listening to music during a warmup and anaerobic performance had subjects do a 10 minute warmup with and without music before a 30 second sprint on the bike. What they found was that peak power and mean power was higher after a warmup with music. Now, granted, this was just a 30 second test, but for the types of cycling events where a warmup is most important, like cross country mountain bike racing or cycle cross racing, the first 30 seconds of the race can be crucial. And if listening to music during your warmup means that you're a couple places up going into the woods, it could be very valuable. Again, though, listening to music that you actually like versus whatever they happen to be playing at the event seems to be key. This study on preferred music during a warmup had rowers listened to no music, preferred music or non-preferred music during a five minute warmup before completing a 2000 meter time trial. Not too surprisingly, when subjects listened to their preferred music during the warmup, they performed better both in terms of relative power and time. What was interesting was how much higher motivation was when listening to preferred music, a metric where listening to no music at all was actually better than listening to non-preferred music. So we're definitely starting to see a pattern here, whether that be for listening to music while you're riding or during a warmup. And we've been looking at individual studies, but let's take a step back and see what reviews that look at many studies have to say about listening to music and how it affects your performance to get a little bit of a clearer picture. This review article on music and exercise stated that pretasque music has been shown to optimize arousal, facilitate task-relevant imagery, and improve performance. This is especially true in repetitive endurance activities like cycling, reducing perceived exertion, improving energy efficiency, and leading to increased work output. That being said, there does seem to be a point at which music won't help anymore. The review states that music may be ineffective at reducing perceptions of exertion beyond the anaerobic threshold. This review comes to a similar conclusion, stating that the greatest response to music as a motivational aid is found with aerobic or endurance training, while resistance training and anaerobic training need further investigation. Luckily, cycling is a repetitive aerobic sport where listening to music seems to have the most benefit. But if you're doing sprints or hard efforts where you're gonna be close to maxed out, it appears that listening to music can only do so much for you. One thing we haven't touched on is exercise adherence. Obviously, you can't get fitter on the bike if you don't actually go out and ride. And it seems that music may help with this. This review on music and athletic performance found that listening to music may yield long-term benefits such as exercise adherence and heightened sports performance through a superior quantity and quality of training. And I've generally found this to be the case. During a long day on the bike when questioning whether to call it a day and ride home or stay out a bit longer, the decision is always made a little bit easier by having a good playlist going. If I'm in the middle of a 25-hour training week, most of which I do alone and I'm riding in silence, that's a lot of time alone with my own thoughts to think, what the hell am I doing out here? This hurts, I wanna go home. That being said, a lot of athletes never listen to music so there's probably a little bit of personal preference here. Look, the only thing that I'll say about that is that if you actually listen to that Zwift startup music instead of your own music or literally anything else for that matter, that's borderline psychopathic behavior right there. One last interesting piece here before we get into the question of safety. There may actually be differences between the sexes and how effective music is at improving performance. This study tested just that. Just like in previous studies, they had subjects perform a running test with no music, preferred music and non-preferred music, but they paid attention to the differences in male and female results. They actually found that women ran significantly further in the preferred music condition while men did not and that music had a larger effect on endurance running performance in women. Just an interesting tidbit there, but we do have to remember that this was just one study. Okay, let's move on to safety because this is a big concern for cyclists. Wearing headphones while you ride reduces the amount of surrounding noise you can hear, obviously. Common sense would dictate that this is a bad idea if you're riding on the road because you won't be able to hear traffic or even on the trail for that matter because you won't be able to hear other trail users. What does the research have to say? This study on listening to music and cycling behavior had subjects complete a cycling course while listening to music with either one or two earbuds in. Loud auditory stop signals were missed significantly more with two earbuds in. However, when using just one earbud, performance was not affected. In the conclusion, they state that riding with only one earbud had no negative effects on cycling behavior and performance on the auditory tasks. From a safety standpoint, this is very important. If you're riding on the road, it's probably best that you use just one earbud or use a pair of headphones that have an open ear design. There are plenty of bone conduction headphones on the market right now that leave your ears open to the surrounding environment. On top of this, this study that actually looked at phone use and listening to music in relation to bicycle-related traffic accidents surprisingly found no impact of music or phone conversations on cyclists' involvement in traffic incidents. Now, I'm not recommending that you talk on the phone while you ride, but if you listen to music with one earbud in or use headphones with an open ear design, then you're probably not putting yourself at a higher risk of an accident. That was a lot of information, so what are the big takeaways? First, will listening to music improve your cycling performance? Yes, if you're listening to high tempo music that you actually enjoy. Those are the two big factors, though. The same principles apply when listening to music during a warmup, and because cycling is a repetitive aerobic sport, you may stand to benefit the most from listening to music. From a safety standpoint, as long as you have one or both ears open to the environment, you should be fine. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a like. Subscribe for weekly science-based cycling videos just like this one, and share this video with your cycling friends. I'll see you in the next one.