Top Ten Songs to Get You Off the Couch and Into the Gym
The majority of us have our favourite gym songs that get us in to the zone when we're working out, and it turns out that the effect we feel from it has been proven by scientists.
Wearing a lab coat to the gym can be pretty cumbersome, but sports psychologist Costas Karageorghis from Brunel University London is no stranger to it. He's spent 20 years studying what makes athletes tick, and he believed that music is one of the most powerful performance boosters there is.
"I often refer to music as a legal drug", he tells ESPN, but for best effects you need to plan your playlist carefully, as it's "a complex science". There's a lot to consider in this field, but Karageorghis breaks it down in to a couple of categories to help explain how he does it. Firstly, he works with athletes to find their natural running pace, and then finds songs that are 1-2 BPM faster, pushing them to go harder. Secondly, music can pump you up and anything in the "sweet spot" of 120 to 140 beats per minute can boost an athlete's mood. Finally, there are the benefits of association and dissociation: the former is nicknamed 'The Rocky Effect', as "just hearing the track conjures potent associations that can direct behavior in a positive way", while the later allows the brain to block out signals from the muscles, lowering the perceived level of exertion that the athlete feels.
So, what does all this mean to us? Well, Karageorghis has put together a playlist of the 10 songs that are scientifically proven to pump you up for your next session, in order of how you should listen to them.
1. Sing - Ed Sheeran
2. Heroes - Alesso
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3 Let’s Go - Calvin Harris
4. Lips Are Movin - Meghan Trainor
5. Dare - Shakira
6. Don’t Stop - 5 Seconds of Summer
7. American Beauty/American Psycho - Fall Out Boy
8. Changing - Sigma, Paloma Faith
9. Bang Bang - Jessie J/Arianna Grande, Nicki Minaj
10. Marilyn Monroe - Pharrell Williams
However, this is of course all down to one's own taste in music, and something tells us that if you're above the age of 12, you might not like that particular playlist. Karageorghis works with a number of different companies to produce playlists on a regular basis, which you can get on Spotify.
So as January nights put us off our New Year Resolution's to get off our bottoms and move, what's on your current playlist that might inspire us all?