Gizmodo always knows how to give us the most random yet useful information. Random news of the Day: What is the best music to run to? They're gotten this down to a science. Check out their reasoning and over 100 songs to choose from to make your running experience the most intense yet!
You are welcome.
This isn't just about taste. The right music can improve your form, optimize your heart rate, and lower your risk of injury. Listen up.
Determine the Target Tempo
Legendary distance running coach Jack Daniels analyzed the stride of many elite runners, and he found that they almost all took 180 steps per minute (or 90 steps with each leg). Since this revelation, 180 has become the bullseye pace. To hit this number, runners usually need to take more steps—most people have a bouncy stride, which wastes energy and strains joints through excessive impact.
You don't need to run with a metronome to measure the 180 beats per minute (BPM) tempo. The right songs do the counting for you. Now, you won't find a lot of allegrissimo songs set to 180 beats per minute. But you will find a gazillion songs in the ballpark of 90 BPM range. Those can work just as well to keep you right near the 180 BPM rate. (Really, any pace from 170 to 190 BPM will do.) Here's how to find the right types of tunes.
Analyze Your Music
If you have a sizable digital music collection, download a program that analyzes the BPM of your music. I had good results with Cadence Desktop Pro, which is available for OSX and Windows. It analyzed my entire iTunes library and added the BPM to the metadata. Once it was done, I Just went to View > View Options and checked Beats Per Minute under "Show Columns," in iTunes. Super easy, and generally pretty accurate, though long intros can trip it up (as can audiobooks).Cadence will run you $7. There are free alternatives, like BPM Assistant for Mac or BPM Calculator for PC. You may get what you pay for.If you need music recommendations to build a playlist from scratch, sites like Running Music Mix helpfully list songs by BPM range.
Tap To Check
Once your music is sorted into a BPM-driven playlist, double-check for a consistent tempo. Listen to a song and use three fingers to tap along in time. Watch the seconds tick off in the music player. If the song is 180 BPM, you should be tapping exactly three times per second. If it's 90 BPM, tap in double-time, three times per second. When you're sure the music is in range, copy that playlist onto an MP3-playing device and put on your running shoes.Of course, several optimal playlists emerged as a byproduct of this research. If you stream music, you're in luck.
The Hard Part Is Figured Out Already
This project produced two rather large Spotify playlists in the 170-190 and 85-95 BPM range. It took forever. You're welcome.
170-190 Hip-Hop170-190 Rock and Other
Click either of those links to open up your Spotify app to subscribe to the playlists. The hip-hop list contains 138 tracks for about nine hours of dope jams. The Rock and Other list is a random hodgepodge—it probably won't fully satisfy anybody's exquisite taste, but it's got 91 tracks for five hours of music. Grab the songs you like and add them to playlists of your own. If you've got Spotify Premium you can listen on your mobile device. (Note: We made every effort to make sure all of the songs were in the correct range, but it's possible that one or two off-tempo tracks snuck in there.)
No comments:
Post a Comment