For the first time in a while, I was actually driving through Athens last weekend. For the first time in as long as I can remember, Princess Leia walked in front of my car.
The orphan princess of Alderaan was pumping her arms and glistening. At second glance I noticed she wasn't Princess Leia, but rather a middle-aged woman with obnoxiously large headphones Pacmanning her head. In a glare befitting of future roadkill, the woman told us she was unaware of us, yet frighteningly cognizant we had almost cut her off.
I once characterized people who listened to music while exercising as the types that picked me up from soccer practice. Only baby boomers could get away with squeezing into spandex and multitasking like that. As they charged through town with five-pound weights in each hand, their eyes would be fixed vacantly forward. That look - the determination, the consternation, the self-righteous self-mutilation - it all looked faintly Orwellian.
Enter Rihanna.
Dum dum dee dum, dum dum dee dum dum. It was Ping's signature thump last year. When temperatures dipped and I wanted to log miles, it became my thump too. I never liked the song much, so I mobilized and made my own playlist for indoor jogs - The Runs.
On it was everything cathartic: Green Day mixed with Linkin Park, splashed withEye of the Tiger and topped off with modern rock. Trips to the treadmill evolved into heroic sweating, blood-letting and lyric-mouthing rituals.
Looking around as inconspicuously as one can while behind a row of whirring elliptical machines, the clear majority of exercisers at Ping are plugged in, and for good reason.
An article in Science Daily last year discussed a study at Brunel University, showing music made exercising a more enjoyable experience. But that's as predictable as Nickelback lyrics. These good feelings translated into a 15 percent boost in overall endurance throughout the workout. Dr. Karageorghis, the lead researcher, is optimistic music will drum up interest in exercise and one day cause the polar fat caps in America to melt away.
Another study at the University of New Mexico (seripeutously carried out by Len Kravitz, Ph.D.) was inconclusive about whether or not the likes of rapcore and grunge metal make us lift better. But marching to a different beat, found that mellow Sinéad O'Connor mixes can relax us, which lowers muscle tension, a crucial component of weight lifting.
Limp Bizkit downstairs in the weight room and Leona Lewis upstairs in the fitness room, the tracks with which we construct our playlists paint a picture of how we approach exercise personally.
Kravitz's same study found music doesn't make the heart grow fonder for exercise. It's just the opposite - he discovered that by introducing music to a workout, heart and breathing rates increase and that faster tunes quicken the heart slightly more than slower ballads. Music made the heart work harder.
The study later concluded that above all else, music style is what gets the college kid sweating best. In a survey of 70 students, 97 percent said style affected the quality of a workout, with 96 percent believing tempo was crucial. Lyrics came up with 77 percent consideration and volume tallied 66 percent. Melody sat on the lowest rung with 17 percent of the surveyed opining it affected their workouts.
Though I'm normally plugged in while I pass the weight room to the lockers, I still fear allegations of being a sissy ninny every once in a while. No big deal: Press the menu button, flick the thumb, click the center button and I'm good to go.
My eyes feel like they're gonna bleed.
Dried up and bulging out my skull
My mouth is dry
My face is numb
... On my own ... here we go
Adam Liebendorfer is a sophomore studying journalism and Spanish and a columnist for The Post. If you find any good tunes, obscure or otherwise, forward them his way at al211307@ohiou.edu.
4 Opinion
Adam Liebendorfer
