Sound and music influence our mood, our behavior, our actions, AND our performance. So it’s worth talking about the sorts of sounds that you are choosing to listen to.

I think about what I listen to a lot when I am in the hangboarding phase of my training. Hangboarding is considered by many climbers to be deeply boring. Often times, the only thing that gets me psyched is cranking up Katy Perry and pounding Skittles. This artificial motivation puts me into a Berserker rage, and I’m able to complete my training.

That’s my motivational secret: the right training mix. A collection of music that gets my ass in gear, starting with C+C Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”.

When I met my wife, she had a mix of punk and power pop British bands I had never heard of. I was into 70’s arena rock and classical music. Since our merger, and the introduction of the music on Glee, we have grown a music catalog ranging from J.S. Bach to Woody Guthrie and from Boston to Katy Perry.

The Wife loves to speed bag (and dance).  To do this, she needs fast music which acts like a metronome to set the pace.

When I train, I often borrow her training mix because, as I mentioned in the post Audiobooks, my mp3 player is full of books on tape, so I don’t have a whole lot of room for music.

It really doesn’t really matter what gets you going—and don’t judge yourself here—the point is to find WHAT GETS YOU GOING.

Music has a powerful influence on our physiology. It helps us block out external distractions and get psyched during training sessions. I can’t speak to the long-term effects of training while under the influence of Katy Perry, but this shit works!

About the same time that I was writing this, I watched a great series of TED talks by Julian Treasure. He has spent his career study the effects of sound on performance. He discusses the science of sound and speech, which is fascinating when you do stop to think about all of your inputs (It’s not just food, water, drugs or alcohol that you are allowing into your body, but sound as well!)

Sounds are amazing. Yes, there are good ones and bad ones, but in the end, it comes down to finding the right mix.