Over the past few months, I’ve been training for the London Marathon, so most weekends I’ve been out running more than 20 miles at a stretch. I carry the usual bits to make these long slogs vaguely civilised – energy gels, a water bottle, a couple of fruit pastilles. They help, of course. But there’s one thing I absolutely cannot do without: music.
Non-runners sometimes ask if I ever feel like giving up and trudging home. And honestly, the only times that’s happened is when my AirPods have died and the music – my invisible pacer, my emotional support DJ – has suddenly vanished mid-run.
This makes sense, according to Victoria Williamson, a researcher and lecturer in music psychology and the author of You Are the Music. She says that hundreds of studies show music improves endurance by around 15 per cent and reduces perceived exertion by around 10 per cent. For context, caffeine – the darling of the endurance world – only manages about 3 per cent for endurance and 5 per cent for perceived exertion. Although your energy drink is doing its best, it’s simply no match for a properly timed chorus.
I’ve never fancied a tea halfway through a run, but I always fancy a tuuuune. Music boosts dopamine – the brain’s ‘reward’ chemical – making everything feel a bit more enjoyable. It also distracts you, in the best possible way. When your brain is busy belting out the chorus, it has far less capacity to dwell on the fact that your legs are starting to feel like overcooked spaghetti.
As I discovered when I wrote my book Running: Cheaper Than Therapy, exercise is more about what’s happening in your head than your legs. Put simply, when your brain is focused on a song, it has fewer resources left to dwell on how tired you might be feeling. It’s all in the mind.
There are other perks. If you can hear yourself panting, it’s a rather pointed reminder that you’re getting tired. Drown that out with music, and suddenly everything feels more manageable. Even better, you’re spared the soundtrack of other runners’ wheezing and groaning – never the morale boost one yearns for during a race.
When you listen to music as you run, your body naturally syncs to rhythm, a process called entrainment. This can help maintain a steady running pace, improve efficiency of movement, and reduce wasted energy. That said, sometimes you don’t want steady, and music can help there, too. If I’m doing an interval run (alternating short bursts of high-intensity, fast-paced running with recovery periods of light jogging), I find that songs that switch between fast and slow sections are perfect personal pacers.
Think cheesy stadium anthems, not polite background music for people discussing sourdough starters
Music just makes running more fun and it can trigger the emotional states or identities you need to keep going – as long as you pick the right tunes. A run is not the moment for experimental jazz or a 14-minute prog-rock odyssey, replete with three separate drum solos. This is the time for massive, familiar bangers – the kind that make you feel like you’re headlining Glastonbury, not limping round a damp park. Think cheesy stadium anthems, not polite background music for people discussing sourdough starters. Basically, if you’re embarrassed to be listening to a song, it’s probably the right one for exercise.
In the gym, music blocks out the clatter of weights and the inescapable chatter of other humans, helping you slip into that elusive ‘zone’. Most gyms provide their own playlists these days – endless, vaguely interchangeable tracks that sound like they were curated by an algorithm with a kink for bass drops. So don’t forget your airpods.
There are disadvantages to all this. If you listen to music every time you run or workout it’s easy to build a dependence on it – as I have discovered when my AirPods run out. A growing number of running events ban headphones for safety and insurance reasons, so if you’ve had tunes in your ears as you train hard for an event, you might struggle on the big day without them. It’s good to develop a range of sources of motivation to keep your runs interesting and the sounds of birdsong are one of the joys of running.
There are safety concerns when you’re running outdoors if you can’t hear approaching vehicles or potential predators. And in the gym, there are moments – lifting heavy weights, attempting anything involving balance or coordination – when full attention is rather more useful than a killer playlist.
But when you get exercise music right, it’s everything. Professor Costas Karageorghis, a leading expert on the interplay between music and exercise, said that the right workout music can be a type of ‘legal performance-enhancing drug’. I agree and that’s why I’ll continue to mainline it straight into my ears.
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