4 Effective ways to use music for your run

Music is a very powerful tool. It can alter your mood, perceived energy levels, focus, determination and many other things. When used correctly, music can enhance your workout and performance, when used badly it can ruin it. Therefore it is important how to use music in its most effective ways to ensure your run is the best it can be. Here are are a few pointers to how to use music. It is important to point out these are general rules and may not work for everybody but why not give them a try, research has shown these to be effective for a significant amount of people so the chances are you could be like those people!

1. Pick the tempo for your run and match it to your music.
People have a natural call towards rhythm, its what makes people want to dance, its what makes people unknowingly tap their foot along with the beat. If that tap is out of tempo with the music the brain gets confused and feels unnatural. Therefore it will naturally want to join with the beat of the music. This will also happen with your strides. So if you have a set speed you want to run, pick music at that speed and your brain will naturally drag you towards that pace. There are apps available that can help you to do this, but I am yet to personally try them so I don't know how good they are, since I still use my old-fashioned, heavy, non-touch-screen iPod.

2. Pick music that will lift your mood.
Sad, slow music or music with unhappy lyrics can potentially have a negative effect on your mood, which will in turn affect your motivation to push yourself during the run, it can also build up an association between being in an unhappy mood and exercising/running. This means your brain will learn that you are often unhappy when you are running, and therefore start to not want to go running as that makes you unhappy.upbeat, positive music can have the opposite effect and make your subconscious feelings towards running more positive and also help you feel as though you have more energy to push yourself during your run.

3. Have distraction/emergency songs.
use music with a meaning to you or something you really like and save them for later in the playlist or queue them ready to be played when you most need it.It seems obvious but music can distract you from the pain, the boredom, the tiredness of the run. Putting the music that is most powerful at distracting you in the parts of the run you will most struggle with (most likely the end!) will help you to forget those troubles and power through.

4. Have a Get-ready-to-run song. 
Sometimes the hardest part of running is forcing yourself to actually get up, get ready and set-off. Having a Energetic, motivating song that you always play when getting ready to run will put in you into run-mode! It can be as cheesy as you like, for instance the theme tune from the film Rocky is a sure winner, but it needs to be a positive, energetic song that will help get that blood flowing. Continuously doing this will create the link in your brain that hearing that song means it will prepare the body to run... one suggestion here is perhaps not picking a song that is popular at the moment and regularly on the radio... not only will that lessen the effect but also you don't your body to start getting ready to run, e.g. sweating, breathing heavier while you're stuck driving to work in a traffic jam.

These are 4 simple tips that can help to improve your running, so give them a try, see how the work and feel free to comment with your own tips in the feedback. If you would like to work with Brain-SPEC to optimise your training and performance get in touch via the email address for more information.

Can high fives make a difference?

Sport is a very emotional game. In a team, or pair, or even individual game there are people that you

will look to share those emotions with. Even lots of individual sportsmen would want to share their successes with... some of the most touching moments in sporting history have been individual sportsmen running to their spouse or coach at the end of the championship. It has even become a somewhat expected custom in Wimbledon that the winner climbs up to their 'box' to share a hug and often a tear with those they are close to.

But is this sharing of emotion just a nice thing that can be poured out once after the end result, of could it be a factor in making that end result.

In team sports (and doubles) communication is an important factor for success- not only communication of different tactical elements but also exchanges of emotional information.

A pat on the back for a basketball player who missed a free throw may help console them, a handslap could reinforce a player who did something well, encouraging them to continue doing what they are doing, a team huddle may help build that cohesive unit that works so well together on the pitch.

One thing you may notice here for these examples is that they all contain an element of physical contact, or "touch".

Research done in the NBA, with some of the highest paid athletes in the world, by Kraus and his colleagues, showed the the amount of touch in the early season games could predict the levels of success the teams would show over the season. This factor was still important even when you had taken into account the early season performances and expert expectations for the team prior to the start.

This shows that teams that engage in more touching behaviour tend have more success...

Overall this is a relatively underresearched area so the precise reasons as to why it works are still unclear. Though research in mainstream psychology has long shown an ability to enhance a relationship through apropriate levels of touch.

What practical things can we take from this?

Well, the research does not show that touching more often causes more success, but it is linked. So, if you look at your team, how often do they slap hands or pat each other on the back or hug each other. If it's not often then it might be worth looking into the cohesion of the team. Are there any issues that may need addressing? Or are the players just not that close in general? Either way perhaps this is something the coach might want to improve.

It might be worth encouraging them to engage each other more often. I'm not suggesting there should be a mandatory hug between every member of the team between every point. But perhaps encourage a few more high fives after something good. Encourage the players to rally round a mistake with a few pats on the back of support to lift that players spirits back up. You may find that this actually has a positive effect on the general emotions of the team and the togetherness of their feelings and performance.