Is music motivational or distracting? It can be either so be really careful! Music plays an incredibly important part in focus and it can make or break a workout.
We have all seen this many times at the gym, the person who seems to be endlessly fiddling with their MP3 player or iPod/iPhone. They seem to lose track of time and take enormous breaks between sets or don’t seem to be working out at all. They really want to hear that great song but they just cant find it.
The time to make a music playlist is before your workout, not during!
If you find music helps you focus and give you a good workout, fine, but here is my rule. No futzing with your music player at the gym – period! When you start your workout you push play, after that you are not allowed to touch it again for any reason. You can either leave the ear buds in your ears or take them out – those are your two options. Why am I so uptight about this, because its incredibly easy to de-rail focus! Without focus your workout will be a waste of time and you wont gain strength or mass.
Personally I dont have the time or patience to download and make playlists, too much work. Oh, and lets not forget the cost of buying all that music. A much better option for people like myself is to use streaming music. If you have a smart phone, you can download an application that lets you listen to a zillion different commercial free “radio stations” and then stream the music to your phone via the data connection. Pandora and Shoutcast are two such free streaming radio services. Pandora annoys me with all their commercials so I stick to shoutcast myself.
People always ask what I listen to when I’m working out, personally I like high energy stuff but many people like classical or jazz. The type of music doesnt matter, its whatever can drive you with intensity and incredible focus thru your workout.