Shifting the musical beat to influence running cadence

The use of music in the fields of sport and rehabilitation has been explored in several ways. Mostly, these studies have dealt with the effect of different types or genres of music and the difference between using synchronous or asynchronous music. Within the studies on synchronous music there is some discrepancy as to what is considered to be synchronous. This varies from music with a tempo in the range of the tempo belonging to a certain task, to music that is exactly matched in tempo to the task's tempo. The use of tempo- matching music allows us to even do more fine-grained music alterations: shifting the beat to try to spontaneously manipulate a runner's cadence. Musical tempo has been shown to have an effect on running. Instead of changing running cadence by manipulating the musical tempo, we explored the possibility of manipulating cadence by changing the relative phase angle of the musical beat. Twenty-six recreational runners ran four minutes, nine times. The first minute of each 4-min sequence consisted of running without musical accompaniment. Running cadence was measured and the average cadence of the final 15 sec was used to select a musical track with matching tempo. In the following three minutes we tried to increase or decrease the runner's tempo up to 5%. Three different coupling strengths, meaning a small, medium or big timing difference between the beat and the footfall, were tested. The study revealed a significant main effect of the phase angle adjustment strategies on runners' cadence and velocity. Furthermore, a significant gender interaction effect was found for runners’ cadence adaptation. Women spontaneously increased or decreased their running tempo with the +5% and -5% target tempo conditions respectively. Men, however, could be sped-up, but not slowed-down more than the decrease in cadence that was already observed when the musical beats were perfectly synchronized with the footfalls. In addition to effects on kinematics, the results showed higher enjoyment levels with music than with metronome, and a decrease in enjoyment with the -5% tempo conditions. Being able to influence runners' cadence, velocity, and enjoyment through phase-shifted music is an interesting finding in the light of preventing and treating common running-related injuries.