Let's Go: Psychological, psychophysical, and physiological effects of music during sprint interval exercise

Abstract

Background While sprint interval training (SIT) is time-efficient and can elicit meaningful health benefits among adults who are insufficiently active, one major drawback is that people can find it to be unpleasant. Consequently, researchers have begun to investigate the use of music to enhance people’s pleasure during SIT. Presently, little is known about the application of music to SIT protocols designed for insufficiently active individuals.

Purpose To investigate the psychological (affective valence, arousal, enjoyment), psychophysical (perceived exertion), and physiological (heart rate [HR], power output) effects of researcher-selected motivational music during a low-volume SIT protocol performed by insufficiently active adults.

Methods Using a randomized, fully-counterbalanced design, 24 insufficiently active adults (12 women, 12 men; 24.08 ±4.61 years) inexperienced with SIT completed three SIT trials (3 × 20-s “all-out” sprints with 2-min recovery periods) under different conditions: motivational music, podcast control, no-audio control.

Results Post-exercise enjoyment was greater in the music condition (M = 89.58 ± 17.33) compared to podcast (M = 83.92 ± 19.49; p = .04, ηp2 = 0.18) and no-audio (M = 85.28 ± 17.92; p = .04, ηp2 = 0.17) controls. Over the course of the SIT trial, HR responses were elevated in the music condition in comparison to the podcast (p = .02, ηp2 = 0.23) and no-audio (p = .03, ηp2 = 0.21) controls, and peak power output was higher in the music condition when compared to the podcast (p = .02, ηp2 = 0.23) and no-audio (p = .01, ηp2 = 0.25) controls. Affective responses over the course of the SIT trial were more positive in the music condition when compared to the no-audio control (p = .03, ηp2 = 0.18), and tended to be more positive in the music condition when compared to the podcast control (p = .11, ηp2 = 0.11). Moreover, a rebound toward more positive affect was observed post-exercise in all conditions.

Conclusions The application of music during SIT has the potential to enhance feelings of pleasure, improve enjoyment, and elevate performance of SIT for adults who are insufficiently active, which may ultimately lead to better adherence to this type of exercise.