Listening to music when you hit the gym to improve your workout isn't exactly a new concept. But understanding how your favorite tunes enhance your exercise is a little less obvious.

Research consistently finds that listening to music distracts athletes from their 'bodily awareness' (read: pain). And a recent study found that not just listening, but controlling and creating music in time to one's pace had an even more profound effect on perceived effort during a workout.

Here are seven very good reasons to rock out during your next gym session.

1. Music is the good kind of distraction. lifting weights and listening to music While the study did suggest there's more to it than distraction, working out with music did make participants less aware of their exertion. Such a distraction can benefit athletic performance by up to 15 percent, The Guardian reported. The faster the better, according to WebMD: Upbeat tunes have more information for our brains to process, which takes your mind off of that side stitch.

ccording to a study published earlier this month, the relationship between music and physical exertion may be more complicated than we initially thought. It isn't just listening to music that drowns out our pain and exhaustion, asserts lead researcher Tom Fritz. The process of creating and controlling music in time to one's exercise improves the experience even more.

Participants exercised on machines designed to alter the music they were listening to based on their movements, essentially allowing them to create their own soundtrack. Compared to exercisers who had no control over the music, those with 'musical agency' reported feeling like they hadn't worked as hard.

We can't all work out on equipment that coordinates our movements with musical sounds, but we can harness the power of creating music when we exercise. The finding, said Fritz about his study may provide 'a previously unacknowledged driving force for the development of music in humans: making music makes strenuous physical activities less exhausting.'

The team analysed 6.7 million Spotify playlists containing the word ‘workout’ in the title to compare the different beats per minute (bpm) and compile the ultimate playlist.

A person’s typical stride rate while jogging or running is 150 to 190 strides per minute.

If these figures are halved it gives a range of 75 to 95 bpm – the beat range most commonly used in urban music, particularly rap.

Whereas pop is perfect for slower, more repetitive-type tasks, including aerobic warm up and cool down because many pop songs 'have regular rhythmic patterns.'

Dance music is best suited to strength and weight training because of its ‘fast, rhythmical, bass’.

Whereas rock music should be avoid during cardio and high-intensity workouts because the different changes in tempo can affect a person’s rhythm.

op workout music playlist, if you're the sort of person who thinks a trip the gym should sound like a night at the club, this is the playlist for you. Please subscribe our Workout Music Channel for more free music: http://goo.gl/1qWwDI

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They say that listening to Mozart makes a person smarter, but a new study shows that it’s not only classical music that boosts mental activity. Nine out of 10 workers perform better when listening to music, according to a new study that found 88pc of participants produced their most accurate test results and 81pc completed their fastest work when music was playing. “The take-home message is that music is a very powerful management tool if you want to increase not only the efficiency of your workforce but also their mental state, their emotional state - they’re going to become more positive about the work,” said Dr David Lewis, a neuropsychologist and chairman of Mindlab International, the company that conducted the research.