Gear for Your Ear! Fast & Slow Songs Can Both Speed You Up on the First 800m of a 5K. Plus: Calm Songs Increase Vagal Tone & CNS Activity, Fast Songs Spike You Up!

One of the runners in the study (original image from Bigliassi. 2014)

Music-related interventions have been widely used in sports and exercise; and despite the fact that you've read about respective studies here at the SuppVersity before I thought the publication of a recent study from the Center of  Physical  Education  and  Sports at the State  University of Londrina was a good reason to address the issue once more.

It goes without saying that there are numerous external factors which determine the optimal workout music, as well as how and when to use it. Against that background, it should be obvious that the following study outcomes are not entitled to be "universal".

HIIT workouts probably require different music than LISS workouts

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Tabata = 14.2kcal /min ≠ Fat Loss

30s Intervals + 2:1 Work/Rec.

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Just think about personal preferences, for example. A classic fan is probably not going to work out listening to music by Dr. Dre... well unless he's boxing, maybe! A thought that takes us to another important factor: Who knows if the same music that helps you to lift harder will also make you run longer and vice versa?

Why is this important? Well, in the study at hand, the exercise of choice was running. An exercise type the authors considered particularly fit for their study, because it's "a common physical exercise worldwide, due to its own features (low cost and availability for practice) and high aerobic benefits". Moreover, previous research has demonstrated that music can aid running by acting in parallel to exercise. It was thus logical to try to expand our still incomplete knowledge of the effects of music on exercise performance - albeit this time in a long term study with many degrees of freedom:

"Acoustic gear" - (Re-)Read my previous research summary from 2013 | go ahead

"This study was divided into 3 stages that were performed in the course of 30 weeks. In the first stage, all participants were interviewed separately before the experiment. At this time, they gave their anthropometric measures (weight and height), personal information (age, time of continuous training, number of running competitions and training volume), and answered the Eysenck personality questionnaire (EPQ), which gives possible stratifications according to personality, checking whether music could act differently in accordance with personal features."

The subjects had to select 30 motivational songs (10 – slow speed tracks, 10 medium speed tracks and 10 fast speed tracks) and the only provided information was to select songs capable of increasing their vigor and motivation to accomplish a severe aerobic physical exercise (when the number of tracks did not achieve the required number, they were asked to choose other songs to complete the playlist). The song stratification was performed initially via specific software solutions and thereafter by the examination of an expert musician.

How did the tests look like? The actual exercise tests consisted of 5 physical tests. Each of them involved a 5km run which was to be completed as fast as possible. The time between the tests ranged from 3-7 days. All tests were performed at the same time of the day.

In the second stage, all participants were called in to the laboratory, where they had to fill their questionnaires and to perform a neuroimaging test involving listening to a variety of songs. This technique was conducted to demonstrate how self-selected songs could act in emotional areas of the brain and how the subsequent activation of specific brain correlates with physiological assessments and the effectiveness of motivational music in inducing emotional consequences and downstream metabolic / ergogenic effects. All-in-all, the present study evaluated five experimental conditions:

• PM: Motivational songs, ranging from 110 – 150 bpm, applied before 5 km of running; 
• SM: Slow motivational songs, ranging from 80 – 100 bpm,applied during 5 km of running;
• FM: Fast motivational songs, ranging from 140 – 160bpm, applied during 5 km of running; 
• CS: Calm songs condition – calm songs applied after 5 km of running; 
• CO: Control condition, without intervention. 

The CO trial was considered the baseline, all other trial were compared to. The CO trial was performed in a silent environment to allow the subjects to focus exclusively on their body signals.

Figure 1: Parasympathetic tone during recovery (in min on x-axes) after control trial (no music)
vs. calm music (left) and motivational music (left | Bigliassi. 2014)..

As you can see the 15 amateur runners (24.87 ± 2.47 years;78.87 ± 10.57 kg; 178 ± 07 cm; 24.92 ± 2.79 kg/m²; 4.85 ± 1.85 years of training; 7 ± 3.49 weekly training hours; 5.67 ± 2.85 competitions) had a significantly reduced parasympathetic tone during recovery, when they trained with motivational music (low parasympathetic tone = "spiked up").

Slow or fast? Does it matter or is it just about music in general?

The calm music (Figure 1; left), on the other hand, led to an increase in parasympathetic tone, as you would expect to see it in someone who meditates or "chills" as the kids like to call it ;-) Now that sounds great for weed-heads, but from a performance perspective it was obviously as detrimental - interestingly, though, not much more detrimental than not listening to music at all.

Figure 2: Effects of control (CO), motivational (PM), slow (SM), fast (FM) and calm (CS) music / songs on fatigue, tension, vigor, and 5k times (in s) - the effects are visible, but not significant (Bigliassi. 2014).

The most important and yet unquestionably somewhat disappointing observation Bigliassi et al. made is however the statistical non-significance of the the visible time-differences in Figure 2. 

If we investigate, why the visible advantage was "no advantage" in the strict sense (i.e. it was statistically non-significant), we will obviously get back to what I said initially: Inter-individual differences and preferences loom too large to make any generalizable recommendations with respect to the optimal workout music.

Performance ain't everything: What could be of interest in future studies, are the recovery effects of an increase in vagal turnus (=pa- rasympathetic acti- vity) after 5 km of running with calm music (P < 0.05) - it's not ergogenic, but could be a great tool to calm down after an intense strength training workout; and thus probably even to speed up recovery and re- duce the likelihood of overtraining.

Bottom line: The scientists are right when they highlight that "the present study accomplished a very real training situation (5 km of running – open space and self-selected songs), making the present findings useful for further applications" (Bigliassi. 2014). Accordingly, the prefrontal cortex activity the researchers observed and the positive emotional consequences they detected via autonomous system analyses have a similar real-world relevance.

Whether this is also true for the significant performance increases on the first 800 meters in the slow and fast music trials is questionable. Personally, I suspect that some of you will benefit from the fast, while others from the slow songs. This conclusion would also be supported by the significant inter-individual differences in the study at hand.

So, if there is any general take home message from the study at hand, it would probably be the notion that there is a "high probability of improving running performance when music [is] applied (SM: 89%; FM: 85%; PM: 39%)," at all - which one is the "best", on the other hand, will depend on the individual, as well as the type of exercise | comment on Facebook!

References:

• Bigliassi, Marcelo; León-Domínguez, Umberto; Buzzachera, Cosme F.; Barreto-Silva, Vinícius; Altimari, Leandro R. "HOW DOES MUSIC AID 5 KM OF RUNNING?" Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research: Post Acceptance: July 15, 2014.

Don't Want to Sacrifice Your Strength on the Altar of Cardio Training? Creatine Monohydrate to the Rescue! Differential Effects on HIIT / Steady State, Legs / Chest

Women can use creatine, too ;-)

It's not too long ago that I'd stuck to the word "creatine" in the headline of today's SuppVersity article. In view of the fact that four years after the publication of Ralf Jäger's study on the inefficiency of all super-innovative novel forms of creatine in 2011 people obviously have forgotten that the only ones who benefits from any of these "advanced" creatines are patent holders and supplement producers, I thought it may be a good idea to make sure nobody abuses this article to pimp his patented "super creatine" ;-) And in case you are worried about the alleged instability of creatine, just take it with some baking soda (learn more).

Now that we've done away with the "advanced creatine" lies, we can get to the actual news... or, well, actually it's not really surprising that Vítor de Salles Painelli and his colleagues from the University of Sao Paulo (hi Lucio ;-) end the abstract to their latest paper in the European Journal of Applied Physiology stating that "the acute interference effect on strength performance observed in concurrent exercise may be counteracted by Cr [creatine] supplementation", is it?

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Certainly not, as a SuppVersity reader you are after all long aware of the fact that this "interference" is hilariously overrated and creatine the #1 non-hormonal strength builder on the market.

If you take a closer look at the effects the 5km pre-workout run (10 min rest before the workout), the subjects had to perform before in a continuous (at 90 % of the anaerobic threshold velocity-Atv) or intermittent (1:1 min running at VO2max vs. walking) fashion, are yet not what you maybe thought the "Altar of Endurance Training" would look like.

Figure 1: Changes in leg press and bench press strength endurance after continuous 5-km continuous (CE) and intermittent (1 min running at VO2max, 1min walking) aerobic exercise (de Salles Painelli. 2014)

And as the data in Figure 1 goes to show you, 5km at a comparatively high intensity do (much in contrast to a 5km run on non-workout days) will significantly reduce the performance on a subsequent 1-RM or strength endurance test on the leg- and bench-press.

Figure 2: Changes in leg press and bench press maximal strength after continuous 5-km continuous (CE) and intermittent (1 min running at VO2max, 1min walking) aerobic exercise (de Salles Painelli. 2014)

If you compare the effects of the 20g/day of creatine the subjects consumed for 7 days before the first exercise test (preload) and at at dosage of 5g/day for the rest of the study period, on strength endurance (Figure 1) and maximal strength (Figure 2) you will realize that the effects are exercise and muscle part dependent.

• Your strength endurance on the bench will suffer significantly less from a 5km run to the gym, than your maximal strength - no wonder, it's after all not really used when you're running.
• The intense intermittent 5km run will reduce your strength endurance on the leg press to a significantly higher degree than the continuous run.

In the end, it does yet not matter what you do. As long as you take your creatine you are on the winning streak. An when all is said and one, there may even be a small increases in 1RM as it was observed in the study at hand after either continuous (bench press and leg press) or intermittent (bench press) aerobic exercise in the creatine group - in other words, as long as you're "on creatine", the 5-km run can actually be ergogenic ... well, okay "non-significantly ergogenic" ;-)

Creatine is not just a performance enhancer, it's also a potent non-ROS reducing antioxidant | more

Bottom line: Aside from the fact that I deem it necessary to repeat that (a) you don't need anything but pure creatine monohydrate and that (b) it's not necessary to flood the system with 20g of creatine everyday for a whole week, if you are not taking part in a study and need your creatine stores to supersaturate within the next 7 days, I have little to add to the results of this study...

Ok, maybe one thing: If you want to take only two supplements, they must be whey protein and creatine. And honestly, you don't really need anything else.

Reference:

• de Salles Painelli, Vítor, et al. "Creatine supplementation prevents acute strength loss induced by concurrent exercise." European Journal of Applied Physiology (2014): 1-7.
• Jäger, Ralf, et al. "Analysis of the efficacy, safety, and regulatory status of novel forms of creatine." Amino Acids 40.5 (2011): 1369-1383.