Evaluation of a motivational pre-exercise music intervention

While music has been found to motivate exercisers during workouts, its potential as a pre-exercise motivator has rarely been investigated. This study evaluated a self-selected, pre-exercise music intervention against implementation intentions (writing down 'if … then …' sentences relating to overcoming barriers) and a control condition. A total of 50 participants ( M_age = 43) took part in a longitudinal, randomised, between-participants study, from 99 recruited. For both interventions, participants had significantly more success meeting self-set exercise goals than the control group, and the music group exercised significantly more frequently than the control group. There was support for music as a comparable intervention to implementation intentions.