Below is Chapter 16 from the new book, B Sharp!
Here is a quote about the new book from Mark Allen, 6-Time IRONMAN World Champion and Coach: “Reducing stress, gaining happiness, experiencing joy and fulfillment, living a life filled with longevity and vitality…the list of qualities we all search for is broad. In "B Sharp!” Dr. Maffetone explains how participation in music brings us all of this and more. As an athlete, I have seen over and over how movement and exercise sparks these same enduring benefits. But it was not until just recently that I started to experience personally how music does the same. When we become a vehicle for the creative expression of music it goes to the core of our souls and unleashes a powerful cascade of physical changes that keeps our brains pliable, calms our nervous systems and expands our sense of wellbeing in a way that can only be described as profound. Once again, Dr. Maffetone is sharing tools we can all use to unlock the best our common DNA has to offer. Thank you, Phil!”
16
The Music of Exercise and Sports
In the book Musicophilia, Dr. Oliver Sacks explores the profound relationship between music and the mind. The famed neurologist suffered a serious leg injury while mountain climbing, describing how he was able to get down the mountain before dark by singing “The Old Volga Boatman.” He “musicked” along to rhythms and melodies that made his mind overcome the pain. Later, in the hospital, he repeatedly listened to a Mendelssohn violin concerto. After weeks of struggling to walk, he found that “the concerto started to play itself with intense vividness in my mind. In this moment, the natural rhythm and melody of walking came back to me . . . and along with this [came] the feeling of my leg as alive, as part of me once again.”
While music’s motivation for the brain is undeniable, it includes the physical response to it promoting another form of natural power — body movement. Both create a beautiful blend of art and science. As one, music and motion are greater than the sum of the parts. It’s virtually impossible to not move to music, which would also not exist without the physical motor skills to create sound.
Encompassing one common human expression, music and movement create a global language, fundamental to our social and cultural roots. We usually experience and witness this during international sports events. This shared coexistence is a natural promotion of peace that transcends differences in racial and ethnic, political, religious, and other differences. We see it in children who are known to promote prosocial behavior when exposed to music. Whether a single individual action or one that influences our world, that most important first step begins in our musical brain.
Music can also prepare us for physical actions from helping us get fit or reach goals like running a 26-mile marathon, and others between and beyond. And it can complement various types of mental or physical therapies including rehabilitation.
The use of music can be individual. Consider that those with certain personality traits prefer background music while working, driving, or performing other tasks. For others, silence is best. Yet silence enlists imagining music, even if subconscious.
A pro baseball player plugs in earbuds to hear favorite tunes while putting on a game face. Soon, a special personal song accompanies his name as both are blared out over the stadium’s speakers. But like all others on the field, by the time they are ready to hit, throw the ball, or run the bases, the outside music is stopped. The mind even mutes the crowd noise. This is the brain on autopilot.
The DMN
The default mode network or DMN is autopilot. A connection of numerous brain areas that internally processes many external events at one time. It’s multitasking at its best, allowing optimal physical performance of familiar activities, enlisting memories of previously learned skills and subconsciously plans for upcoming actions. Most experienced race-car drivers go into it, as do tennis players, golfers, and other athletes. Likewise, performing musicians. We all use it, including during everyday driving.
The DMN also is critical to our effective use of imagination and creativity, and night and day dreaming. It also enlists alpha.
However, the DMN can be quickly deactivated, diminishing performance when we shift the brain into a state of intentional focus. This puts us into beta, and why texting while driving is dangerous. Music can interfere the same way, and why our baseball player performs best without it. Some sports organizations ban personal music during competition, and some states have rules about driver’s use of headphones and earbuds and even devices themselves — Oregon has a “no touch” law for phones in the vehicle.
Autopilot can be impaired when in a high beta state, including excess talking just like internal chatter interferes with meditation. In addition, neuroticism and other brain injuries, physical trauma, especially to the head and neck, chronic pain, and dementia can reduce autopilot. As with driving and competitive sports, an impaired or turned off DMN can interfere with exercise, too.
When first learning the details of an activity like tennis or guitar, we rely on intentional focus. Eventually, as we no longer must think of each of the many details, the DMN takes over, and we play on autopilot, using a massive amount of subconscious processing to automatically perform well. While the brain normally uses a significant amount of energy for healthy function, 90 percent of it goes to an active DMN.
Our past music experiences that lead to better brain function bring the important question of whether listening during exercise, playing sports, or competing is useful or not. The DMN is so valuable during exercise but may not be as effective during music listening. Instead, turn the music off and listen to your body, allowing the DMN to promote smoother, more accurate and efficient movements requiring less effort and energy. In other words, let the brain conduct the body.
The DMN is described as a meditative state like healthy daydreaming (using imagination), mental time travel (thinking about past and future), and an almost effortless undistracted unaware awareness. It appears to encourage both introspection and mind wandering which also enlists imagination. (Some types of meditation encourage mind wandering while others aim to reduce it.)
Beethoven was deaf for years, only hearing music with his imagination. These musical hallucinations are common in acquired deafness.
During REM sleep the DMN is also very active. Scientists think this enables dreams to rehearse or simulate potential future events to prepare for them. In addition, this DMN-REM activity helps consolidate memories, both in preparation of and after new learning, another reason why sleep quality and quantity are vital for a great brain. Physical activity can also be impaired in those with sleep disorders due to aging-like deterioration in muscles.
The dopamine system drives the brain’s feeling of reward, also controlling movement and coordination using the DMN. Dopamine is activated by music listening, imagining, playing—and in the anticipation or prediction of them. The passionate quartet of dopamine, the DMN, physical activity, and music existed in the earliest humans.
Other benefits of the DMN may include:
- Protecting the brain and promoting healthy aging.
- Its accompanying alpha state.
- Encouraging neuroplasticity.
- Allowing continued improvements in the activities being performed.
- Preventing depression, anxiety, attention deficit, post-traumatic stress disorders, memory loss, and cognitive decline.
Listen to your body
When learning details of a specific physical activity, intentional focus is required, and music listening can interfere. When performing physical activities already learned, hearing music may not be best either. Instead, let the brain listen to the body. It’s a powerful meditation the DMN regulates. Every step we take, each move we make, sends billions of messages to the brain where they are quickly analyzed so others can be sent back to the body for appropriate ongoing adjustments in movement. External music can compete with and distract from these many sensations.
Free feeling in motion is one of the wonderful features of physical activity and sport. It’s a meditation that goes beyond just sensing the muscles that move the arms and legs. The heart beats (another muscle), the breath moves in and out (the diaphragm and abdominal muscles), and our joints, ligaments, tendons, and other structures send and receive vital bits of information to and from the brain. Fortunately, autopilot manages the process. If you’ve never meditated on motion, it makes for an amazing aspect of working out.
Likewise, for our external environment. Merging with nature, whether a city park or far off trail, is full of its own beautiful sensory sounds, smells, and sights. The woods and fields, the grassy flowered knolls, and trees induce another brain rejuvenation. This practice of Japanese shinrin-yoku or forest bathing can powerfully reduce stress. The value of a single workout, or just being there, is potent enough to last days. Music listening during this event can interfere.
Listening for the wrong reasons
While marketing encourages the use of music during exercise, research shows that listening to appropriately selected songs exert a range of work-enhancing (ergogenic) and psychological effects on the body. The process underlying this auditory–motor coupling is called entrainment. Reported short-term effects include increased exercise intensity, distraction from fatigue and pain, improving arousal, mood, and motivation, and inducing a sense of power.
While some researchers have hailed these effects, likening them to illegal performance-enhancing drugs, especially using loud driving rhythmic music, some clinicians are aware of potential long-term harms. Research also shows that these ergogenic effects can eventually lead to reductions in health and performance.
Music can mesmerize people who may not realize the potential hidden harm. This musical mentality can drive the popular myth of no-pain no-gain, inducing physical, biochemical, and mental stress. In short, it can create a condition of fit but unhealthy people, including athletes at all levels.
The fallout is remarkably common. Pushing fitness at the expense of health can lead to physical injuries like a pulled hamstring or knee pain, even career-ending impairments in competitors. Many retired athletes have life-long disabilities. Overtraining can reduce immune function, leading to increased infections and illness, and depression, anxiety, and more serious mental impairment, diminishing performance along the way. The metabolic effects are staggering too — more than ever those who exercise have rising rates of excess body fat. These are well-recognized components of the overtraining syndrome, a stress pattern also called burnout in executives, parents, teachers, students, and others.
Hollywood promotes the same intense driving music that can overstimulate the brain. Songs from movies like Rocky and Chariots of Fire glorify no pain no gain. Just watching a movie relaxing on the couch can rouse the nervous system and raise the heat rate.
Some have become strongly dependent on music’s emotional trigger to power a workout. Loud driving rhythms run through earbuds, gyms, and training centers hoping it distracts from pain and fatigue, elevates mood, and drives longer training at faster paces, not unlike caffeine.
While music can’t completely cover the pain and fatigue during exercise, it can make the activity feel more positive, even enjoyable. This misguided motivation distorts messages to the brain. Pain is a warning that something is not right, like an impending injury. Fatigue reflects the onset of muscle weakness, reduced performance, and a precursor to further injury. (During competition athletes don’t cover pain and fatigue but contain it, so it doesn’t distract as much from performance.)
In addition to interfering with the DMN and reducing performance, other potential problems associated with music listening during physical activity include:
- Commonly used high volumes risking hearing damage.
- Raising intensity and heart rate beyond one’s planned goal or ability, risking overtraining, and shifting metabolism to burn less stored fat for energy.
- The risk of accidents, especially in the presence of people, animals, equipment, motorized vehicles, and uneven terrain.
Those more extroverted use less of their DMN, often playing music while working and driving. In certain situations, this can be distracting for the brain. Studies show that higher involvement in auto crashes is positively associated with being extroverted. In my clinical experience working with athletes, those who listened to music during workouts were more often injured, although this needs further scientific scrutiny. In a study on snowboarding, music listening resulted in fewer injuries but increased the risk of a more serious injury requiring a visit to the emergency department.
There are two interesting exceptions to this discussion. Like the baseball player, most exercises and sports have variations in body movements based on the situation, terrain, and numerous other factors. In these cases, music can be distracting and interfere with effective physical performance. For obvious reasons, this is not so in well-trained musicians:
- Experienced dancers, figure skaters, and others can successfully incorporate the DMN using musical rhythms as an expressive meditation, often not hearing other aspects of a song.
- Skilled musicians, including vocalists, engage autopilot while performing.
In these individuals, the brain’s natural management of the DMN is associated with and encourages higher levels of proficiency.
The remedy
The best remedy is utilizing the beneficial components of music listening at specific times around exercise:
- Pre-exercise music can powerfully influence the workout in healthy ways, like our baseball player.
- These effects are maintained as you start working out, when silence is best.
- Post-exercise initiates recovery (when more benefits are realized than the workout itself). Music here, especially easy listening, can be very helpful.
Despite this, some people still will listen to music during exercise. If you must, here are ways to reduce the risks:
- Employ heart rate training (exercise biofeedback) to lessen the risk of overtraining when music may take charge of the workout instead of the brain.
- Research shows slower-tempo music can also improve physical performance.
- It may also lower the heart rate, reduce stress, and encourage autopilot mode. Even sedative music can improve performance.
- Avoid playing music loudly. It could make the right music wrong.
In addition, matching music to your workout can be very helpful. Just as certain songs may be best for planned easy aerobic or higher-intensity training, alternate music for specific sections of a workout can help too. For example, while warming up and cooling down avoid listening to Nirvana’s “Aneurysm” and instead relax with James Taylor’s “Sweet Baby James” or even Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.”
The warmup
Whether an easy walk or high intensity training, actively warming up the body first is an essential feature. This applies to all exercise and sport including strength training, tennis, golf, and others. A walking warmup is ideal. Properly done, this easy 15-minute prepping the body improves muscle circulation for more efficient movement, raises oxygen and fat-burning for energy, and increases flexibility (without the need to stretch) in the joints, ligaments, and tendons, for optimal gait and injury prevention. Throughout the warmup, gradually increase the pace while keeping it relatively easy.
Since warming up involves easy activity, easy listening music is best. Simple classical pieces, folk, soft jazz, easy country, and other relaxing songs work best.
The middle
The warmup ends with the middle part of the workout, which varies in length depending on the total time planned. Whether easy aerobic training or high intensity, you’re moving faster, so listening to faster, but not louder, music may be best. For easy aerobic training, music with a moderate beat is great, but be cautious with higher intensity faster music which could encourage overtraining.
The cool down
Fifteen minutes before finishing the workout, begin cooling down. Just as important as warming up, this final phase marks the key start of recovery. Regarding pace, the cool down is merely the opposite of the warmup — a slowly descending heart rate and intensity ending with a walk. The best music is like that of the slower tempo warmup tunes.
For those just starting or resuming exercise, a shorter warmup and cooldown can be the whole workout.
Exercise playlists
Many musical pieces fit exceptionally well with and around exercise. There are two playlists of my songs, one for easy aerobic workouts, and another for higher intensity training. They can be found with the dancing playlist: maffetonemusic.com/exercise-dance-songs
Physical activity is the essential companion to music — we’re born for both. In the next chapter, this beautiful balance is blended into a meditative dance that can further expand the mind even beyond the previously discussed 5-Minute Power Break.