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High-intensity, cadence-based music designed specifically for running.
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Tout Le Monde à Poil Hella Sound 5:00 min @ |
$.99
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How To Turn Around A Bad Day Hella Sound 30:00 min @ |
$2.99
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What Are You Made Of?!? Hella Sound 30:00 min @ |
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As You Wish Hella Sound 30:00 min @ |
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It’s Something Like This Bill Dolan 35:00 min @ |
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Know It When I See It Hella Sound 5:00 min @ |
FREE!
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Lactate Repeats: All My Everything Hella Sound 36:00 min @ |
$2.99
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Step-Ups: Elation Marshall Watson 35:00 min @ |
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Strides: Choose To Run Lady Southpaw & Jonathan Jones 26:00 min @ |
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Runner's World and running music: how they get it right, and how they get it oh so wrong.
Dear Runner’s World,
We are, as they say, conflicted. On the one hand, we applaud you for your article “Crank It Up: How to map the perfect training sound track”. Running music, and creating the ideal running music playlist, is a subject near and dear to our heart. We firmly believe good running music can make a workout, keep you focused during training, and improve your running.
The songs you suggest, however, are way off the mark, and in direct opposition to what you advise elsewhere. So much so that, if a runner takes your suggestions, they risk injury (“Taking It All In…Stride”).
What is so hard to understand about this concept?
Running to music is simple. A runner’s cadence should fall somewhere between 165 and 180 beats per minute—180 being the universally recognized optimum, as identified by running coach Jack Daniels (Daniels’ Running Formula by Jack Daniels, Ph.D., Human Kinetics, Champaign, IL, 1998, pp. 80-82). All a runner has to do is find music with a tempo that matches their stride rate.
That’s it. There’s no voodoo involved. No fancy math required. No consulting cryptic charts. Just match your music’s BPM to your running BPM. We even have a handy tool for figuring out your stride rate without counting.
So why are you suggesting music with tempos of 64 BPM, 116 BPM, 120 BPM, 127 BPM, etc? Seriously?
Beats per minute (BPM) is an essential element of finding the best songs to work out to. You get this over-arching concept right. And you obviously understand stride rate: in many articles you explain clearly enough that turnover is important, and make recommendations for what a runner’s cadence should be (see: “Taking It All In…Stride”, “Pick Up the Beat”, “Increase Your Stride Rate”, and “Hold Your Race Pace”).
So why this mismatch between optimal running cadence and the music you recommend?
We have a guess.
Your article “Crank It Up” ends with the note: “Most musicians record in the range of 110 to 140 beats per minute…”, which is true. Most music falls into that BPM range, and is ill-suited for running. This is precisely the reason we created Hella Sound, and developed music available in a range of BPM from 145 to 185 BPM. Runners can use these different tempos to advance from slower cadences to faster, improving their stride rate and increasing their turnover. They can also use 175 or 180 BPM tracks for training or race runs, as a tempo guide for their stride when they have achieved faster turnover.
That much is good. You follow this, however, by saying 110 to 140 BPM “...is ideal for low- to Moderate-Intensity Running”, which is horsesh!t. Don’t believe us? Simply consult your own “Taking It All In…Stride”: “This measure can also affect injury rate. Szczepanik said that runners with lower stride counts, say, around 80 per minute, tend to get injured more often. Why? ‘A lower count means you’re in the air longer’—that is, over-striding—‘and strike the ground harder with each stride, increasing injury risk.’”
Runner’s World, help a brother out here. What exactly is it you’re trying to say? Why would you recommend your readers run to music that is so much slower than the cadence you, over and over, recommend?
We await your reply with bated breath.
Sincerely,
John at Hella Sound
John Frenette
Founder, Hella Sound Running Music
www.hellasound.com
Let's keep it polite and on topic.
I’m a huge proponent of the 180 bpm rythm, specially because I’m a barefoot runner. Going slower than that is a killer for us.
HellaSound has a great and practical product here, but if you’d like to run other music, like music you know and appreciate already, you can change its tempo following some steps that I outline over this blog post:
http://pe-lado.blogspot.com/2010/10/pacemaker.html
Keep up that pace!
PS: I just can’t read RW anymore without wanting to write an open letter myself! Too late:
http://www.runnersworld.com/community/forums/runner-communities/barefoot-running/rws-review-minimalist-shoes
For the record, Runner’s World was nice enough to respond to this article via twitter: http://twitter.com/runnersworld/status/32483812604649472
I love to run with music, especially on longer runs. I have tried music designed with specific beats per minute to help train for different paces, but I have found that the gratest motivator is simply running to music I love.
runin4coffee | February 01, 2011