Effects of music during exercise in different training status

This study examined the interaction of exercise and music to establish the impact of these factors on state-anxiety and time to exhaustion comparing trained and active participants.

Twenty-six university students (13 trained, 13 active) completed the State-anxiety Inventory questionnaire before and after a submaximal treadmill running until volitional exhaustion in both music and no-music condition.

ANOVA showed that both trained and active groups significantly reduced their State-Anxiety scores after exercise tasks (P<0.01, partial η2=0.26) independently by the presence of music. Finding also revealed that active group reported a higher significant reduction of their state anxiety score after exercise in music condition compared to no-music task (P<0.05, d=0.80), while this effect in trained group was not significant. Moreover, data showed that only active-subjects significantly prolonged their exercise experience in presence of music (P<0.05, d=0.47), while trained group did not.

This study supports the general finding that exercise is associated with state-anxiety reduction, and suggests that music during exercise may improve this effect in active but not in trained participants. Further, listening to music during exercise may prolong the participants' exercise experience but different training status seems to qualify differently this response.