MUSIC POWERS MY workouts. My playlists distract me when I’m running long distances to forget about everything that hurts, and my headphone bubble provide a protective layer around me at the overcrowded box gym where I do my strength training sessions. I tune in for those reasons—but I’ve also heard that music can be a legitimate performance enhancer. So when my editor asked me if I was up for a week of silent workouts, I groaned. But I was game to give it a try.
Ahead of my trial, I spoke to Jasmin Hutchinson, PhD, professor of exercise science at Springfield College who studies how music affects exercise. Hutchinson confirmed that music can be helpful for workouts. “People usually can keep going for longer or can either run faster or lift more [while listening to music],” she says. “If you can synchronize either your stride or your pedal rate—or whatever it is that you’re doing— to the beat or the tempo of the music, you tend to move a little more efficiently.” Research backs up these claims, too.
But the benefits you get from music aren’t just physical—they’re emotional, too. “Music usually has a fairly positive influence on people’s mood. They tend to feel happier and enjoy the exercise more with music than without,” says Hutchinson. “They also tend to be able to divert their attention away from either sensations of boredom (if it’s fairly light intensity exercise) or sensations of fatigue and discomfort, if it’s higher intensity exercise.”
I use my workout music for exactly those purposes: to feel happier and distract me from the pain. I’m the type of person who needs a catchy hook and head-nodding beat to get going, so I mostly listen to my Spotify On Repeat playlist (which currently features an embarrassing amount of trap rap). I’m also not above hitting replay five times in a row if a song is hitting just the right mood.
My near-total audio dependence makes me the ideal test subject to give up my music—but I’m aware that my audio fixation is a relatively recent practice. Personal audio devices didn’t really exist up til 40 years ago, and even in the age of the Walkman and Discman, the devices weren’t as reliable (or ubiquitous) as our current smartphone age. So music-less workouts aren’t weird. What’s weird is how rare it is to go without music now.
I would spend the week doing what people had done for decades: Rawdogging their workouts. What followed was a week of very sweaty existentialism.
My Week of Workouts Without Music
Fitness is a huge part of my life, and I dedicate a lot of time to my physical wellbeing. But I’m not training for anything specific right now, so I’m currently in a maintenance phase. I’ve stayed consistent with running and lifting, aiming to fit in three short sessions of both each week to keep my energy up and conditioning on point without burning out.
Day 1: Treadmill Strides and Upper Body Gym Workout
I planned to ease into the week with a short outdoor run, but was stymied by a particularly rainy forecast. So treadmill it was. First up, a 20-minute session of strides—1 minute of hard running (around a 7/10 effort), followed by 1 minute of recovery walking.
This was when I noticed—like, really noticed—that my gym blasts music at an annoyingly high volume (probably to drown out all of the grunting). The cacophony is so bad that if you wear headphones without noise-cancellation, you’ll hear two songs at once. So technically, I wasn’t in silence. But I wasn’t in control of the sound, and that felt different.
During my warmup, I kept thinking just how weird it felt to go without my usual music bubble. It was going to be a long week. But as I picked up my pace, I got into the groove. My thoughts drifted to work, a conversation I was avoiding—whatever life thing was knocking around inside my head. Normally, workouts are the one time my brain shuts up. I don’t use them to process; I use them to escape. So this was new. But when I finished, I felt like I’d barely broken a sweat. Usually, I’m sweating after about three minutes. I guess I didn’t need the music to make me forget about how hard I was working; my brain had distracted itself with thoughts instead.
Next up was a 45-minute upper body strength session. My neighbors’ grunting was louder among the squat racks and benches, but I was surprised at how easy it was to tune that out. I focused on my form and tempo, lowering the bar slowly to my chest and pushing up with a bit more power than usual. No music meant no distractions (a.k.a. no more stalling between sets to find the perfect song), and I noticed how much more present I felt during each rep.
Day 2: Outdoor Recovery Run
The next day, I finally got outside for an easy recovery run. Without music, I could hear everything—and there was much more to home in on than I imagined. First, I noticed my foot strikes. The sound was oddly calming, but I thought my shoes would sound light and springy. Instead, they made a steady, dampened slap on the pavement. Then, as my heart rate climbed, I could hear my breathing. When it started to sound too labored, I realized I was pushing too hard. Recovery runs are supposed to feel easy—conversational—and if I could hear myself breathing like that, I definitely couldn’t be chatting up a running partner. So I slowed down. I was starting to think maybe this experiment had a point.
But then, halfway into the run, I got hungry. Really hungry. And without music to distract me, that hunger became the only thing I could focus on. The 20-minute run stretched into what felt like an hour. Every block dragged.
Day 3: Lower Body Gym Workout
By Day 3, I stopped automatically reaching for my headphones for daily tasks. I walked around my neighborhood without a podcast playing. I didn’t wear my noise-cancelling headphones on the train (until now, I considered a masochistic act that I wouldn’t wish on my enemies). I wasn’t trying to be virtuous, I just didn’t feel like it. I was enjoying existing in the world without shutting it out.
At the gym, I started my workout, feeling unsettled from the start. The energy was weird and I wasn’t locked in. The music blasting over the speakers felt chaotic, and without my own playlist to drown it out, it was hard to focus. But when I got to my harder lifts for the day—deadlifting—I could pay attention to my breathing (by that I mean I could make sure I actually remembered to do it). I started syncing my breath with my reps, something I’ve probably done before but never paid attention to. I felt strong and dialed in.
When I spoke with Hutchinson later, she mentioned that heavy lifting was one scenario where silence might actually help, since music can distract from the multiple factors you’re trying to manage (form cues, breathing, engaging the mind-muscle connection). My hunch is that’s exactly what was happening here.
Day 4: Outdoor Run
This was the low point of the week. I had an hour-long run on the schedule, and my body already felt off. My legs were heavy (maybe because I chose to do a long-ish run after a heavy leg day). My brain was resisting. I had nothing to distract me from the fact that every single step felt hard—no beat to match my cadence or tempo to zone out to. None of my favorite songs to sing to. Just me, overthinking my form and counting down the minutes.
Every time I passed a neighbor playing music or a car with their stereo turned up, I felt a small surge of joy, relishing in the moment as the song helped me pick up my pace and made my strides feel easier, even if just for 20 seconds.
But at thirty minutes in, I was still feeling terrible. I cut the run short and headed back home, clocking around forty minutes total. I told myself I was “listening to my body,”—but I wonder if I’d had music, would I have squeaked out an extra mile or two?
Day 5: Treadmill Speed Workout and Mobility
I took a rest day, then got back in the swing of things on the treadmill, where I prefer to do my running interval workouts. This time I was training for speed, alternating between my mile pace, 5k pace, and 10k pace. The intervals felt good—smooth, even—and I barely noticed that I didn’t have music in. I really enjoyed being able to hear how my stride changed during the different paces, and notice how my body and form responded.
I had planned to lift afterward, but I wasn’t really in the mood. I swapped it for a mobility session, which turned into a chance for more processing without the soundtrack drowning out my thoughts. I mentally checked through my to-do list, the texts I hadn’t answered, and the stuff I’d been avoiding all week. Today, it actually felt nice to be able to sort through my thoughts instead of just distracting myself.
Day 6: Outdoor Recovery Run
By Day 6, not using headphones felt normal. It was a lovely spring day and the city was lively, so I went out for an easy 30-minute run.
All the sounds of the neighborhood felt more pronounced: I could hear the birds, the sounds of a pickup basketball game at the park, and the chatter of people on a walk. Nothing profound happened. I wasn’t struck by any life-changing insight. But I felt calm, present, and fully in my body. It was one of those runs where nothing hurt and I didn’t need any extra motivation to get through it.
The Takeaways
Would I willingly choose to do all my workouts sans headphones from now on? Absolutely not. I love having music to set the mood. Especially at the gym, where there’s already a lot going on. Plus, I missed the motivation music provides and syncing my workouts to a rhythm.
But this week showed me that I can go without music, and sometimes, it might even help. If I head out for a run and forget my headphones, I will no longer panic and turn around (unless it’s a long run). And when I want to tune into my body more deeply, I might even go headphone-free on purpose. There’s something nice about hearing your breath, your feet, and your thoughts, especially if you’re someone who usually likes to drown all that out. And if I was running in a new city, I’d happily skip the music to experience the place more fully.
Hutchinson says that for people who are new to working out or struggling to stay consistent, music can be an important motivator. If you fall in this camp, you may want to keep using it. But if you already have a solid routine, there may be benefits to going without every once in a while. “It’s good to just test yourself in a new way and if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll get the same results, right?”
Music still makes most workouts better. But tuning into the silence might teach you something, too.
Hannah Singleton is a freelance journalist who writes about fitness, health, wellness, travel, and the environment. Her work has been in publications such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, GQ, Vox, Wired, National Geographic, Forbes, and Fast Company. You can follow her @hannahsingleton.
