Should you be playing music during training sessions?

Adding music to a training session might sound like a good idea but it creates a poor coaching environment.

Photo by Artem Ka on Unsplash

I'm often surprised by the number of people I encounter on my morning walk who don't react to my cheerful "Hello" (I notice their ear buds only as I pass by). Many people immerse themselves in music and other forms of entertainment during their exercise time almost to the point where they exist in their own solitary world. 

Listening to music, podcasts, or news while out for a walk helps the time pass more enjoyably or lets people accomplish two (or more) tasks at the same time, exercising while getting a headstart on the day's news, for example. 

Listening to music affects our mood and motivation, which can be beneficial when combined with physical activity. Exercise especially.

Science backs this up. Various studies show that music can have a beneficial effect on performance by enhancing motivation, endurance, focus, and mood. These effects depend on the type of music the individual enjoys but also the type of music in general. For example, rhythmic, fast tempo music aids mood and helps increase exercise intensity, while music with a slower tempo helps in relaxation and sometimes deepens concentration. 

But exercising doesn't require much attention; we can walk for hours, for example, without ever thinking about it. The additional cognitive load caused by the music isn't an issue since we're easily able to shift attention to something else without disrupting our walking.

This is why listening to music or the radio is popular while driving, a limited skill performed frequently over a long period of time. Once we become good at it, any cognitive load it may require occurs in short bursts, while merging or in construction zones, for instance. But we turn the volume down or even off when something unexpected happens like severe weather, difficult traffic conditions, or making navigation decisions. These conditions require a sharp and immediate increase in our attention, so optional distractions are removed. In situations like this the attention demands are high and even minor distractions, like background music, interfere with what we should be concentrating on.

I became interested in music's effect on physical activity and learning after reading several posts in a swim coaching forum that asked about the music teams play during training. The post assumed this was something everyone did. 

When I suggested the athletes couldn't even hear the music since they're underwater most of the time some commenters claimed that the athletes liked to listen between bouts of swimming. If so, when does the actual "coaching" take place? The pool is a workplace for the coach and a classroom of sorts for the athletes. Imagine a school teacher playing music during a geography lesson. Who would think that was appropriate?

It's difficult to create a deliberate practice environment in swimming even in the best conditions because so much of the practice focuses on metabolic training. But when skills are the focus of a practice then music quickly becomes a distraction. Admittedly, coaches don't always have as much control over the training environment as they might like. I remember sharing a pool with water aerobics three days a week. But where the opportunity to shape a proper deliberate practice environment exists it's the coach who actually has to do it. 

Something else we often overlook is the impression created when our training environment is flooded with music. Does this sound like a professional setting to parents who observe practices? Parents often wonder why their child doesn't receive more attention from the coach. Couple this with what sounds like an impossible teaching atmosphere and soon trouble is brewing due to a situation directly created by the coach. 

When Robert Pirsig wrote in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that he would not take his cycle for service where the mechanics had music playing, his point was that quality work, attention to detail, and caring about results depended on the mechanic being fully engaged with his task. Music, according to Pirsig, might prevent the mechanic from doing his best work, or not even notice the problems that caused the owner to bring his cycle to the shop in the first place. 

Read the room. Appearances matter. Do your clients expect you to be listening to music? What kind of impression are we giving parents when they begin to think that practices are used simply for entertainment?