Table of contents:
- How to choose your running cadence music
- How to choose music to match your breathing rate
- How to find music with the right tempo
2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44
The perfect jogging playlist is not only the one you like, but the one that accompanies like a metronome and serves as a reference point for your movement. Lifehacker offers compilations for those who don't know where to start looking for the right running music.
How to choose your running cadence music
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Listen to the playlist in "Google Play Music" →
This collection includes compositions of many genres, united by one unobvious characteristic - the number of beats per minute (bpm). When we run, we take a different number of steps, ranging from 160 to 200, in 60 seconds. Professional athletes take about 180 steps per minute, which is considered the optimal running cadence - the frequency of the feet touching the ground.
Listening to music while jogging, we unconsciously synchronize the frequency of our steps with it, which is why it is so important to choose the right songs at the initial stages, when the body is not yet accustomed to a certain running cadence.
If, when choosing music, you are guided by your running cadence, then try to keep the tempo of the tracks in the range of 170-190 beats per minute or 85-95. If you select a song whose tempo is half 180 bpm, the number of steps per measure (four beats) will increase accordingly. Good news for fans of drum and bass: this genre implies a tempo that matches the running cadence (170-180 bpm). The same goes for hip-hop: the tempo of many songs is close to 90 bpm.
How to choose music to match your breathing rate
If you don't have problems with cadence, then pay attention to how your lungs are working: the right music will also help with this.
Consider two breathing techniques that Lifehacker wrote about in the corresponding article. If we breathe according to the 3: 2 pattern, where three steps are for inhalation and two for exhalation, then it is worth choosing music at a tempo of about 144 bpm. In this case, the length of a measure of the song will coincide with one complete breathing cycle.
Play Playlist on Apple Music →
Listen to the playlist in "Google Play Music" →
If you run up a hill, then you have to put more effort and, as a result, your breathing quickens. If so, try a 2: 1 pattern - two steps for inhalation, one for exhalation. Music with a tempo of about 120 bpm will serve as a suitable accompaniment. One beat - two breaths.
Play Playlist on Apple Music →
Listen to the playlist in "Google Play Music" →
How to find music with the right tempo
To find out the bpm of a track, check its availability in the SongBPM database. If it was not found there, then use a special calculator: just "click" on the screen to the beat of the music. There are also special services with playlists of songs at a certain pace for athletes or cyclists. One of them is Jog, which ranks tracks by the number of additions to custom playlists and bpm, and also offers individual selections for your running speed indicators.
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