Workout Music: Does It Actually Improve Performance?

My embarrassing gym playlist confession

Before we get into the science, I need to come clean about something. My gym playlist is 40% mid-2000s rap, 30% metal, and 30% Taylor Swift. I am not joking. There is something about "Shake It Off" in between Pantera tracks that just works for me during high-rep sets.

I know a guy who exclusively listens to classical music during heavy deadlifts. He pulls over 600 pounds to Beethoven. Another guy I trained with listened to audiobooks and had to pause mid-set because he was at a good part. I have seen someone do heavy squats to what sounded like a spa meditation track.

The point is: what you listen to is personal and the research on workout music is less about specific genres than it is about how music interacts with your brain during physical exertion. So let me walk you through what we actually know.

What the research actually says

The short answer is yes, music improves exercise performance. The longer answer is that it depends on the type of exercise, the tempo of the music, and how you personally respond to auditory stimulation.

Karageorghis and Priest (2012) published a comprehensive review in the International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology that analyzed decades of research on music and exercise. Their key findings:

• •Music can reduce perceived exertion by up to 10% during submaximal exercise
• •Synchronizing movement to a musical beat improves efficiency (relevant for cardio)
• •Music improves mood before, during, and after exercise
• •The performance benefits are stronger for endurance activities than for strength activities
• •Self-selected music produces larger benefits than researcher-selected music

That last point matters. The music you choose yourself works better than music someone else picks for you. There is a strong psychological component here that goes beyond the acoustic properties of the sound.

How music affects endurance performance

This is where the evidence is strongest. During cardio, running, cycling, rowing, and similar activities, music produces measurable performance improvements.

A 2012 study by Waterhouse et al. had cyclists ride stationary bikes while listening to music at normal tempo, then at a 10% faster tempo, then 10% slower. When the tempo was increased (without the cyclists knowing), they pedaled faster, covered more distance, and produced more power. When the tempo was decreased, they slowed down. The effect was unconscious. The music was literally dictating their effort level.

Terry et al. (2012) found that running to motivational music increased time to exhaustion by about 15% compared to running without music. Fifteen percent. That is not a subtle effect. In practical terms, if you would normally last 20 minutes on a hard run, music might carry you to 23 minutes.

The mechanism appears to be distraction. During moderate-intensity cardio, your brain is constantly receiving signals from your muscles and cardiovascular system saying "this is hard, we should stop." Music competes with those signals for your attention. When you are locked into a beat or lyrics, you are processing less of the discomfort. You still feel it, but it bothers you less.

This distraction effect diminishes at very high intensities. Once you cross your lactate threshold and your body is screaming at full volume, no song is going to drown that out. But for everything below maximum effort, which is where most training happens, music provides a genuine performance boost for endurance work.

How music affects strength performance

Here is where it gets more complicated. The evidence for music improving strength performance is weaker and more inconsistent.

Bartolomei et al. (2015) tested the effect of self-selected music on bench press performance and found a small but significant increase in the number of reps performed across multiple sets. Biagini et al. (2012) found that self-selected music increased bench press velocity compared to no music or non-preferred music.

But other studies have found little to no effect on maximal strength (your one-rep max). A study by Ballmann et al. (2019) found that preferred music improved bench press power output compared to non-preferred music, but the effect on actual 1RM was not significant.

My interpretation, based on both the research and a lot of years under the bar: music helps with submaximal strength work (your working sets of 6-12 reps) more than it helps with maximal efforts. When you are grinding a true 1RM, you are so internally focused that external stimuli barely register. But during a set of 10 where reps 7, 8, 9, and 10 are the ones that matter, the right song can be the difference between stopping at 8 and pushing to 10.

Those extra reps are where the gains happen. So even though music might not make you stronger in absolute terms, it can help you accumulate more volume at a given intensity. Over weeks and months, that matters.

Tempo matters more than you think

The beats per minute (BPM) of your music has a measurable effect on your exercise performance. Karageorghis et al. (2011) established some general guidelines:

• •Low-intensity warm-up/cool-down: 80-100 BPM. Slower music helps you keep your heart rate down and focus on preparation.
• •Moderate-intensity work (most weight training): 120-140 BPM. This matches the natural cadence of most repetitive movements and keeps energy high without being frantic.
• •High-intensity cardio/HIIT: 140-180 BPM. Faster tempos encourage faster movement and higher heart rates.

For context, here are some BPM examples:

• •"Lose Yourself" by Eminem: ~86 BPM (slower than you think)
• •"Can't Hold Us" by Macklemore: ~146 BPM
• •"Till I Collapse" by Eminem: ~171 BPM
• •"Thunderstruck" by AC/DC: ~134 BPM
• •"Enter Sandman" by Metallica: ~123 BPM

Notice that many popular "workout songs" fall in the 120-150 BPM range. That is not a coincidence. There seems to be an intuitive match between what sounds right for physical exertion and what the research supports.

Interestingly, going above 140 BPM does not appear to provide additional motivational benefit for most people (Karageorghis et al., 2011). The relationship between tempo and motivation plateaus. So blasting 200 BPM hardcore techno is not necessarily better than 140 BPM hip-hop.

The psychology of music and exercise

Beyond the physiological effects, music does some powerful psychological things during exercise.

Emotional arousal. Certain songs trigger emotional responses that translate into physical energy. That song that makes you feel invincible, the one that is attached to a memory or a moment? It produces a real physiological response: increased heart rate, elevated adrenaline, altered perception of effort. This is not placebo. It is psychophysiology.

Dissociation from discomfort. As mentioned, music draws your attention away from fatigue signals. Bishop et al. (2007) showed that music reduced perceived exertion even when actual physiological markers (heart rate, lactate) stayed the same. You are working just as hard. It just feels easier.

Pre-performance ritual. Many lifters use a specific song before a heavy lift as part of their psyching-up routine. This is a form of classical conditioning. Over time, that song becomes associated with maximal effort. Hearing it triggers the mental state you need. Olympic weightlifters and powerlifters do this instinctively.

Mood regulation. If you walk into the gym stressed from work, the right playlist can shift your mental state within a few songs. Laukka and Quick (2013) found that athletes frequently use music as a deliberate mood-regulation strategy. You are not just listening for fun. You are using sound to engineer your emotional state.

When music hurts your training

Music is not always beneficial. There are situations where it can actually interfere with your training.

Learning new movements. When you are trying to learn a new exercise, like your first time doing a barbell back squat, you need to focus intensely on proprioception (body awareness), balance, and form cues. Music splits your attention. For novice lifters learning foundational movements, training in relative quiet can actually accelerate the learning process.

Very heavy singles and doubles. For maximal efforts, some lifters find that total silence or gym ambient noise is better than music. The internal focus required for a true 1RM is so intense that external stimulation can be distracting rather than helpful. Many elite powerlifters remove their headphones before a max attempt.

When it becomes a crutch. If you literally cannot train without your specific playlist, and a dead phone battery means a skipped workout, music has gone from a tool to a dependency. You should be able to train effectively without it. It just might be slightly less enjoyable.

Social awareness. If you are in a busy gym and you have noise-canceling headphones cranked to maximum, you might miss someone asking to work in, a safety concern, or even a fire alarm. Keep the volume at a level where you can still hear what is happening around you.

Podcasts and audiobooks: the silent debate

A lot of gym-goers listen to podcasts or audiobooks instead of music. Is that better or worse?

For cardio and low-intensity work, podcasts are fine. The distraction effect works similarly to music. You get lost in the content and the time passes faster. Plenty of research shows that any form of auditory distraction can reduce perceived exertion during moderate-intensity exercise.

For weight training, I think podcasts are suboptimal. You need focused intensity during your working sets, and following a complex conversation or narrative works against that focus. I have literally missed reps because I was thinking about something the podcast host said instead of focusing on the lift.

If you want to listen to podcasts at the gym, my suggestion: podcasts during warm-up and between sets, music during actual sets. Switch back and forth. Some apps let you create this workflow automatically.

Training without music on purpose

Here is an unpopular take: try training without music occasionally. On purpose.

When you strip away the external stimulation, you are forced to confront the internal experience of training. The fatigue, the boredom, the mental resistance. Learning to push through discomfort without a crutch builds mental toughness that transfers to other areas of your life.

Some of the strongest people in history trained without music because it did not exist in a portable format yet. Every old-school gym ran on nothing but clanking iron and grunting. The stimulus was entirely internal.

I train without music about once a month. It is harder. The sessions feel longer. But I pay more attention to my body, I focus better on form, and I come away feeling like I earned the session through nothing but my own willpower. There is something valuable in that.

You do not need to do this all the time. But if your headphones die mid-session, instead of going home, try finishing the workout. You might discover something about yourself.

Building a playlist that actually works

If you want to optimize your gym playlist based on what the research supports, here are some practical guidelines:

Match BPM to exercise intensity. Warm-up songs at 80-100 BPM, working sets at 120-140 BPM, cardio finishers at 140-170 BPM.

Use songs you genuinely love. Self-selected music outperforms researcher-selected music in every study. Genre does not matter. If Norwegian death metal gets you fired up, play Norwegian death metal. If it is 90s pop, play that. Do not perform for your gym neighbors.

Refresh regularly. Songs lose their motivational punch over time. Karageorghis has noted that the emotional response to a specific song diminishes with repeated exposure. Rotate new songs in every few weeks to keep things fresh.

Have a "big lift" song. One song that you save for your heaviest sets. By only playing it during maximal efforts, you condition yourself to associate that song with peak performance. Over time, just hearing the opening notes will trigger a readiness response.

Create separate playlists for different workout types. Your leg day playlist should not be the same as your arm day playlist if those sessions have different energy requirements. A heavy squat session calls for different music than a bodybuilding-style pump session.

At the end of the day, the best workout music is whatever makes you want to train harder and longer. The science supports music as a real performance tool, not just background noise. Use it intentionally and it will make a small but meaningful difference in your results over time.