How To Select The Right Music To Unlock Better Performance

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Today’s Health Upgrade

Mindset
Is Your Playlist Making It Harder to Focus?

Music can make a tedious task more enjoyable. But the songs you choose could make it harder to write a thoughtful email.

Whether music helps you work depends on what you’re doing and what’s playing.

For simple, repetitive tasks, music may help by improving your mood and making the work feel less boring. Research supports a mood boost from background music, though evidence that it improves performance is less consistent.

But when the type of work changes — such as work that requires understanding or remembering words — the music matters more. A review of 154 experiments found background music was more likely to hurt performance on difficult tasks than easy ones.

Across dozens of studies, songs with lyrics made reading a little harder. Other experiments found similar costs for memory.

One likely explanation is that processing a song’s lyrics competes with the mental work needed to understand the words on your screen. That makes your favorite singalong a poor match for reading or writing.

If you prefer background sound, instrumental music generally doesn’t cause the same interference. It doesn’t reliably improve focus, either, but it gives you an option without the added distraction of lyrics.

But it’s not just the type of music you enjoy; tempo matters, too. In one small experiment, instrumental music hurt reading comprehension most when it was both fast and loud. Keeping the volume low is a safe default.

For general guidelines, use silence or quiet instrumental music for reading and writing, and save songs with lyrics for simpler tasks, such as organizing files. Judge the choice by how the work goes. If songs with lyrics work for you, that could be all the evidence you need.

Together With Momentous
Is Creatine HCl Worth the Extra Money?

One creatine company says its 750-milligram scoop of creatine hydrochloride (HCl) can do the work of 5 grams of creatine monohydrate. 

If a scoop that small can give you the same results, maybe it’s worth paying more. So we went digging.

To the dismay of many creatine brands, the research suggests your best bet is to save your money and skip the creatine HCl.

Creatine monohydrate has decades of research showing it helps people get stronger. HCl dissolves more easily in water, but researchers haven’t shown that a smaller scoop delivers the same benefit, or that anything with HCl leads to better results or absorption.

Your body already absorbs nearly all the creatine in a serving of monohydrate. And we know what happens when people take it and lift weights. 

A review of 63 studies involving nearly 1,500 people found that those who took creatine gained more upper- and lower-body strength, on average, than those who trained without it. Every one of those studies used monohydrate.

Scientists recently put the two forms head-to-head. In one study, 40 newer lifters followed the same eight-week program. Those taking either form of creatine added more weight to their bench press and leg press than those taking a placebo. 

HCl showed no edge over monohydrate. A second trial in 31 athletes found no advantage for HCl either. 

When you shop, look for one ingredient on the label: creatine monohydrate. Choose a third-party-certified powder and take 3 to 5 grams daily, including on rest days, for performance. For cognitive benefits, you might need up to 10 grams per day. 

What’s different from brand to brand is what comes along with the molecule. That depends on who wrote the quality standard and who checked whether it was met.

Federal rules let supplement makers test against specs they set themselves. And nothing requires anyone to screen for PFAS or microplastics.

Third-party certification, as we suggested, is the right minimum. Momentous Signature Spec Creatine treats it as the starting point and sets a higher standard for quality, purity, and creatine you can trust. 

It’s still one ingredient: creatine monohydrate. But Momentous wrote its own stricter spec. Then they made it in a pharmaceutical facility, rinsed it with reverse-osmosis water instead of chemical washes, and had it checked at six stages by four independent groups: Eurofins, Light Labs, NSF Certified for Sport, and SuppCo’s TESTED.

Will it make you stronger than other clean monohydrate? No. The molecule does that. 

Momentous removes the guesswork about everything else you swallow daily, for years. And it ensures you’re actually taking creatine monohydrate because you know the label is accurate.

APC readers get 35% off your subscription or 14% off a one time purchase with code PUMPCLUB.

Nutrition
Reader Question: Are Potatoes Good Or Bad?

I stopped eating potatoes almost completely due to reading that they have little nutritional value and a high glycemic index, basically raising your blood sugar quickly, like eating a sugary treat. Now, I'm hearing that potatoes are a good, healthy, and inexpensive natural whole food. Which is it? 

The short answer: Yes, you can put potatoes back on the menu. 

Put this in the category of two things that can be true. A potato can raise your blood sugar quickly — but that doesn’t mean it’s bad — and it is a nutritious, inexpensive food. It gives you potassium and vitamin C, and you get more fiber when you eat the skin. It’s also filling. 

In a study comparing equal-calorie portions of 38 foods, people felt fullest after eating boiled potatoes.

The trouble with comparing a potato to a sugary treat is that the glycemic index tells you only one thing about a food. It measures how much your blood sugar rises after you eat a set amount of carbohydrate from that food alone. 

Even the same potatoes can give you a different result, depending on what you eat them with. In one small study, the blood sugar response to mashed potatoes was about half as large when people ate them with chicken, oil, and a salad.

The key thing to remember is that blood sugar rising after a meal is not abnormal. The issue is if your blood sugar stays elevated for hours and never returns to baseline. It’s one of the many fitness myths that makes people avoid perfectly healthy foods like potatoes.

The only downside of potatoes is turning them into French fries.

Researchers followed more than 200,000 adults and found that people who ate fries more often had a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes. They found no clear link with baked, boiled, or mashed potatoes.

If you like potato salad, cook a few extra and refrigerate them. Cooling cooked potatoes can reduce the blood sugar rise, though the effect varies by variety.

Overall, potatoes are nutrient-dense and a great way to help you manage hunger. 

Adam’s Corner
The Things We Run From (No Full Column)

I’ve been working on a post about something I saw on Love Is Blind. (Go ahead and judge)

It’s about vulnerability, being performative, and how the things we run from tend to run our lives.

I like the topic, but it still needs more work. Something feels missing, and I’m not sure what. So rather than force the column, I’m going to give it space to breathe and determine if I can make sense of the lessons, or I’ll decide it’s not worth writing (and that’s why it’s stuck). Either way, it’s not ready.

But I’ll share a section of what I wrote, because I think it’s relevant to so many people:

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If you ever thought it’s necessary to hide your weaknesses, think about Arnold’s calves. 

Early in his bodybuilding career, his calves lagged behind a body that was otherwise built to win the world. He could have hidden them. Longer pants. Clever poses. Plenty of other muscles to admire.

Instead, Arnold cut the bottoms off his pants.

He made it impossible to ignore the thing he liked least about himself. Every time he looked down, there they were. Every time someone else looked over, there they were. So he trained them relentlessly, and the weakness became a strength.

I think about how much harder we make that process when we’re embarrassed to admit where we need work. We avoid questions, turn down help, and keep struggling with something we insist we can handle.

The things we run from tend to run our lives.

There’s a cost to always having something to hide. Part of your attention is always on whether someone might notice. Admitting the struggle gives you a chance to put that attention somewhere useful. And that alone builds your strength and frees your mind.

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Just an excerpt and a taste, but I think there’s a valuable lesson in not feeling the need to hide your weaknesses. -AB
-Adam Bornstein is the co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of Arnold’s Pump Club

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About Arnold’s Pump Club Editorial Standards

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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger​

Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell