Can Music Boost Endurance? New Study Says ‘Yes.’

Key Takeaways: A recent study published in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise found that people who listened to music at 120–140 bpm saw a 20 percent increase in endurance. The study’s lead author and sports psychologists explain why music can improve overall performance and how to find the music that works for you.

Many of us know what it’s like to finally crush a fitness goal. You spent weeks or months increasing your leg press weight by 20 pounds, or shaving a few seconds off your mile. The amount of pride and elation we feel after breaking through a personal barrier is unmatched. Aside from your determination to reach said goal, you were also building endurance during those painful, strenuous workouts. But what does that mean exactly, and why does it matter?

Endurance refers to how long your body can withstand resistance and impact during exercise (resistance can be your body weight or supplemental weights, such as dumbbells). Higher endurance means that you can train longer before reaching failure or exhaustion.

Pushing yourself to exercise longer to boost endurance also offers a host of health benefits, such as improved heart and brain function, longevity, a reduced risk of diseases, and lower blood pressure.

The thing is, achieving better endurance takes work and time. Being too tired, or too busy, to complete a workout is, alas, a struggle we all must face. Wouldn’t it be great if we could boost endurance and feel like we’re doing less? That’s exactly what a new study out of Finland explores.

The research, published in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise, suggests there’s a relatively simple hack you can do to increase your endurance: listen to music, specifically music with a fast tempo—at least around 120 beats per minute (bpm). According to the study, working out to fast-tempo music can boost your endurance by up to 20 percent compared with exercising in silence.

Before getting too excited, there are nuances to consider here beyond simply playing music when you exercise. Here’s what the study authors and doctors have to say about music’s impact on your workout and how you can harness the positive effects.

How Does Music Influence Endurance?

“Music may change the ‘experience of effort,’” says Andrew Danso, the lead author of the study and researcher in the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies at the University of Jyväskylä in Jyväskylä, Finland. Meaning, listening to music may help you to drown out the discomfort of intense exercise, allowing you to work out longer than if you exercised without music.

For the study, Danso and his team recruited 29 adults and asked them to do two separate cycling tests at about 80 percent effort. (Think about going a little less hard than an all-out sprint.) One of those workouts was done in silence; during another session, the participants listened to their choice of music. Danso points out that the participants’ playlists included songs with relatively fast tempos, around 120 to 140 bpm.

The researchers found that when participants biked in silence, the average time to exhaustion—how long they could pedal without getting tired—was 29.8 minutes. With fast-tempo music, people cycled an average time-to-exhaustion of 35.6 minutes. That translated to a 20 percent improvement in endurance. Despite the small sample size, these findings are valuable, as they suggest that listening to music may improve exercise tolerance. This does not prove that fast-paced music on its own directly boosts endurance, but the findings suggest a correlation between upbeat music and increased endurance.

Though participants exercised longer and burned more calories while listening to music, the researchers found that their heart rates and lactate levels (a chemical the body produces when muscles break down carbs for energy use during exercise) were similar to those of people who didn’t listen to music. “The endpoint looked very similar—music just seemed to help people stay with the discomfort longer,” Danso says.

Why Does Music Boost Endurance?

The study didn’t explore why music may support endurance, but doctors have a few theories. “Music does lots of things. For instance, it affects people’s mood,” Douglas P. Terry, a neuropsychologist and director of the Center for Cognitive Neurosurgical Studies at Vanderbilt Health in Nashville, Tennessee, told Outside. “If the music is helping your mood during a strenuous activity, you might be able to do that activity for longer.”

Music can also serve as a distraction during a workout, “allowing individuals to focus less on fatigue and more on the experience of movement,” says Marcia L. Edwards, a sports psychologist and assistant professor in the Jameson Crane Sports Medicine Institute at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine.

Some music may also increase your motivation and help you stay on pace with the rhythm of the beat, Terry says.

“Participants in our study didn’t actually report ‘less’ exhaustion at the end. Their perceived exertion ratings were nearly identical between conditions,” Danso says. “What changed was endurance—they were willing or able to continue longer before reaching that same endpoint.” That’s an important distinction, he says, because those results suggest that even though music doesn’t erase fatigue, it can change how we perceive exertion during exercise.

What’s the Best Music to Listen to Increase Endurance?

This study focused on music’s impact on a cycling workout, but the findings are likely applicable to other forms of exercise, according to Danso. The type of music you use likely matters, too. He stresses the importance of choosing your own music rather than listening to whatever is on the radio, piped through gym speakers, or from a friend’s playlist. But music that feels energizing, emotionally engaging, or personally meaningful is likely more effective for promoting endurance, too, he says.

Choose Songs with a Fast Tempo

To replicate the music the participants responded to, you’ll want to choose songs with a bpm of at least 120. For a sense of what that sounds like, popular songs such as Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” Whitey Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” and “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees are all 120 bpm.

To figure out the bpm of any track, you can use free websites such as Songbpm, and Spotify offers curated bpm-based playlists.

Would Listening to a Podcast Have the Same Effects?

It’s not clear whether listening to spoken-word content, such as audiobooks or podcasts, would offer the same perks. “Podcasts can provide distraction and engagement, which may help reduce perceived boredom or discomfort during lower-intensity exercise,” Edwards says. But she says that music has “unique properties” like rhythm, tempo, and emotional stimulation that can sync with movement to directly influence your workout intensity and pacing.

Not everyone enjoys exercising to music, but Danso says plenty can benefit from this hack. “If music helps you stay engaged and tolerate hard exercise longer, it’s likely a useful training tool,” he says.

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