Science
Take the pain away
29/07/09 15:50
Thanks to JogBlog, I found the excellent Running Matters Blog, one of his posts on music and running is about how music takes pain away! You can read the full post here, and I hope he won’t mind if we quote him directly.
The effectiveness of music in increasing endurance and lessening the perception of pain has recently been tested (an account can be found, here). It involved 80 people plunging their hand into icy water for as long as they could up to a limit of five minutes (for some reasons ethics committees seem to baulk at the risk of inflicting real physical damage). They did this first looking at a blank wall, then a piece of art, and then some music of their choice. The visual stimulation of art did not affect the length of time people kept their hand in the water (although they said it helped them distract themselves from the pain). However music had a significant and pain could be endured longer and felt less.
This is directly applicable to running. Music can help, all you have to do is choose things you like, whatever that may be...
So if you want to take the pain away, get yourself a cracking playlist!
Big respect to Prof RunningMatters for his fine and excellent blog.
The effectiveness of music in increasing endurance and lessening the perception of pain has recently been tested (an account can be found, here). It involved 80 people plunging their hand into icy water for as long as they could up to a limit of five minutes (for some reasons ethics committees seem to baulk at the risk of inflicting real physical damage). They did this first looking at a blank wall, then a piece of art, and then some music of their choice. The visual stimulation of art did not affect the length of time people kept their hand in the water (although they said it helped them distract themselves from the pain). However music had a significant and pain could be endured longer and felt less.
This is directly applicable to running. Music can help, all you have to do is choose things you like, whatever that may be...
So if you want to take the pain away, get yourself a cracking playlist!
Big respect to Prof RunningMatters for his fine and excellent blog.
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