Home » Attitude »

The Perfect Workout Playlist: It’s About BPM

October 3, 2011 9:07 am 0 comments

Share This:

Subscribe:

Author:

Tags:

Readers who wish to “launch their brain into its most optimal mindset” to improve a workout may appreciate the advice of Dr. Galina Mindlin, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and director of the Brain Music Therapy Center in New York. That’s because, as Mindlin she tells Deborah Kotz of the Boston Globe, music changes our mindset, with faster music beats increasing the frequency of brain waves from slow, reflective alpha waves to energized, alert beta waves. Mindlin says we can shift our mind to a desired state–Colorado?- with the right music. Tired and need to rev up? Mindlin suggests tunes with faster beats. Anxious before a big presentation? Music with a slower beat can slow brain waves to bring you to a maximum state of alertness. Kotz reports that Mindlin recommends choosing songs based on their beats per minute, or BPM, and putting them on separate playlists. Songs under 100 BPM are good for relaxing you, and you might want to have a playlist with only slow-beat songs at night. But wait? How does one find a song’s BPM? The easiest route to BPM is Google: just Google a song’s title and BPM. The geekier route involves this software tool. Wait, there’s more: The Globe provides its readers’ ultimate workout playlist here.

For another point of view on this subject, click here.

Leave a Reply


Recent Posts

  • Pain

    Research: Massage Reduces Inflammation In Tired Muscles

    Yes, it feels good, and yes, it can be pricey, but massage also does some important muscle reclamation work after a particularly tough workout. Researchers at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging at McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario conducted genetic analysis of muscle biopsies taken from the quadriceps of eleven young men after they had exercised to exhaustion on a stationary bicycle. A McMaster news release reports on the research, for which one of their legs was randomly chosen [...]

    Read more →
  • Pain

    Exercise May Slow Prostate Cancer

    The findings are preliminary, but they are also provocative: research conducted at the University of California at San Francisco suggests that men who do vigorous exercise three times a week have an increase in the expression of certain genes that are known to suppress tumors, including some breast cancer tumors that similar to prostate cancer tumors. HealthDay reports that when researchers compared prostate genes from 70 men with low-risk prostate cancer to normal prostate genes from 70 men they found [...]

    Read more →
  • Pain

    Fat Hurts: Overweight People Feel 20 Percent More Pain

    How much more does it hurt to be fat? Twenty percent, according to researchers at Stony Brook University. And that’s just if you’re overweight. Obese people hurt even more: 68 percent more for Obese 1 group, 136 percent more for Obese 2 group, and 254 percent more for Obese 3 group, as defined by the World Health Organization. A Stony Brook news release reports that when researchers at the school analyzed data about body mass index and the experience of [...]

    Read more →
  • Pain

    Study: Heart Attack May Be Closer Than You Think

    Forget what your doctor told you about your risk of heart attack. Researchers at Northwestern University have published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine asserting that the common medical practice of focusing on the next ten years of a patient’s life has been giving people a false sense of security about their chances of having a heart attack or stroke. A Northwestern news release reports that when the scientists measured risk factors for cardiovascular disease — blood [...]

    Read more →
  • Pain

    For Back Pain, Try A Kettlebell Workout

    Kettlebells, known as “girya” in their native Russia, are basically cannonballs with handles attached to them, and they’ve been used as long as anyone can remember to train Russian athletes. Now researchers in Denmark have found something else they’re good for: pumping up core muscles so well that back pain is significantly reduced. The New York Times reports on the Danish study, in which 40 middle-aged women with back and shoulder pain were randomly assigned to one of two groups. [...]

    Read more →
  • Gear Study: People Can’t Walk And Text At The Same Time

    Study: People Can’t Walk And Text At The Same Time

    Driving and texting at the same time is understood to be dangerous, if not deadly. But what about walking and texting? Researchers at Stony Brook University put 33 men and women, all experienced texters, through a simple test to see how much texting would influence walking. A Stony Brook news release reports that the test subjects were shown a target on the floor eight meters away. Then, after obstructing vision of the target and floor, they were told to walk [...]

    Read more →
  • Pain How To Tell If You’re Overtraining

    How To Tell If You’re Overtraining

    The question of how much training is too much training is a tough one, but as Gina Kolata warns in her Personal Best column, it’s an important one, because overtraining is worse than under training. In fact, it can be worse than no training at all. Kolata quotes William Kraemer, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut, explaining that “People think a good workout is, ‘I am in a pile of sweat and puking.” Wrong. John Raglin, a [...]

    Read more →
  • Pain When Not To Take That Daily Aspirin

    When Not To Take That Daily Aspirin

    Common wisdom, rarely discouraged by aspirin manufacturers, holds that an aspirin a day keeps heart trouble away. Yet now comes a study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, suggesting that for some people without heart problems, an aspirin a day can do more harm than good. The Washington Post reports that the new research analyzed data from nine studies, involving 102,621 adults (average age, 57) who had been randomly assigned to take aspirin, generally 100 milligrams or less, or [...]

    Read more →