Good Vibrations

Many athletes have learned to exploit this benefit. In carefully controlled experiments, adding a soundtrack helps rowers, sprinters, and swimmers shave seconds off their times. Runners can tolerate extreme heat and humidity longer, and triathletes can push themselves farther before reaching exhaustion. Moving to music even leads athletes to consum

In one study, researchers found that listening to music created the same pain-easing results of taking a tablet of extra-strength Tylenol.

Listening to music is not just auditory and emotional, it is motoric as well: “We listen to music with our muscles,” as Nietzsche wrote. We keep time to music,

experimenter regularly ramped up both the speed and incline. Most people get winded by minute six and give up within eight. When accompanied by music, however, patients soldiered on for an average of fifty-one seconds longer. That’s almost a full minute at their highest level of effort. A cardiovascular stress test is the gold standard for determin