Jogging – It runs better with music – District of Munich

Igor Matišić is just chilling before stepping on the gas again. He takes a few slow steps, stretches, stretches. In addition, Croatian pop runs through his headphones. And then he sprints off, up the steep slope at the west end of the runway that runs through the Unterhachinger landscape park. For the 32-year-old, music is part of playing sports and not playing as a striker at Fortuna Unterhaching. It helps him to relax, it motivates and gives strength. Depending on what he needs. Matišić then changes quickly from the band Dalmatino to MetallicaEminem or AC/DC: “When I’m done, that gives me motivation,” says Matišić.

On this balmy spring evening, some of them are running a small sports program in the landscape park. Kite skateboarders are on the asphalt track. A few boys and girls are having fun with their bikes. And some come complete with earplugs or headphones. They whiz past on inline skates or jog stoically, like the 32-year-old from Unterhachinger, who after his run just does a few sprints so that he can pull away from the opponent in front of the goal.

Music not only helps Igor Matišić, who also trains with earplugs in the gym, to get even more out of his training, to overcome low points and to relax. Researchers at the University of Londrina in Brazil have demonstrated positive effects in a study in which 15 well-trained test subjects completed a five-kilometer run. Sometimes they ran with quiet music, sometimes with a driving sound and sometimes without. The researchers monitored the subjects’ brain waves, mood and heart rate. They checked how they were doing before the run, sent them out onto the course and checked their condition afterwards. It turned out that fast beats and hard riffs like Metallica don’t make a fit runner out of an exhausted one. But the music works. Impulses were found in areas of the brain just behind the forehead that control many bodily functions. In their 2015 study, published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, the researchers write that the music stimulates while running and calms during the recovery phase.

Of course it has to be the right music. A Bach fugue does not bring an athlete to maximum performance in a sprint, but it does help with recovery afterwards. In any case, the test subjects, who were on average 25 years old, were allowed to choose their own fitness sound. That’s close. But there are also many recreational athletes who use one of the countless playlists that can be found on Spotify, for example. If you search there, the subscriber will be suggested what supposedly suits your taste in music and your age. During the self-test in the landscape park, “Jogging 80s Style” appears right at the top, closely followed by “Skirt for jogging”. You’re not the youngest anymore, you think. And so it goes with “Walk of Life” and the chorus “Juhuhu” by the Dire Straits Come on. The song is noticeably exhilarating and propels you along the concrete ribbon in the direction of Ottobrunn. “We got the action, we got the motion”, it sounds in my ear. Fits. And momentarily, the run turns into a jump as things get funky with Prince and the song “Kiss.” You take it in happily, the rest happens in the “prefrontal cortex”.

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But the earplugs are useless and slip out. Didn’t Igor just have real professional clips on his ear that follow every movement? Pros don’t just choose good gear, they put together their playlists carefully. On the Internet for example in the magazine Runner’s World there are many tips. Electronic dance music with the appropriate beats is recommended for a minute to warm up before actually hitting the track. Then there’s hip-hop and rock to speed up and cheer up from U2 or cold playto get the most out of the route. And at the end it’s motivating with feel-good sounds à la Bee Gees to the goal. The Brazilian researchers let their 15 runners with music and without music on the five-kilometer route with the announcement that they would complete it as quickly as possible. On the first laps, the music brought an increase in performance, but in the end the declining physical fitness actually made an impact. A Prince or Eminem as a jogging partner didn’t help either.

In any case, it pays to trust your own taste in music. Dalmatino’s Croatian pop helps Igor focus on the sprint but tends to confuse others. The jogging samplers that are offered bring with them the problem that one registers with joy when a song comes to one’s own taste, only to then collapse inwardly when the next one comes up. Kenny Loggins’ “Footloose” is the end of the eighties. But even the “Jogging Motivation 2022” playlist doesn’t necessarily make you happy when Northa becomes a companion with the song “TikTok”. cardio jogging? Doesn’t necessarily have to be. In a few years maybe.

The sun goes down in the landscape park. Now the list of your favorite songs from the streaming service is running out. This makes the jogging excursion even more enjoyable.