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Jymmin is a combination of a musical jam session with a workout. It is said to offer many benefits, including increasing pain tolerance.
Jymmin
It’s quite an innovative concept. You connect exercise equipment to software to compose music. Jymmin, gym + jammin. Depending on the force you generate, you create different sounds. Do it in a group, and you have a full-fledged fitness band.
That it’s meant seriously is evident, among other things, from the fact that the invention originates from Germany. Germans don’t joke around, after all. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig developed the combination [1]. Gym equipment and free musical improvisation, or jamming. They found, among other things, that this method can serve as pain relief. It could be a natural and especially enjoyable alternative to pain medication.
Above, you can see the exercises they have adapted to work as musical instruments. Including a stepper, one of those weird abs trainers, and a pull-up bar. These can produce a wide variety of sounds. Software for composing music was developed by MPI CBS. An associated sensor system turns the person exercising into a composer. The different devices control different parts of the music.
Pain tolerance was tested by having the 22 participants in the study immerse their hands and forearms in ice water. After training/playing on the jymmin machines for ten minutes beforehand, they could keep their hands in the ice water an average of 5 seconds longer than after a normal workout. Pain tolerance was increased by an average of 10 percent, in some cases even by 50 percent.
Jymmin as a Painkiller
Previous studies have shown that this combination leads to improvements in mood, reduced perceived fatigue, and increased efficiency in muscle use [2,3]. This was compared to regular training.
The effect of exercise on pain tolerance had already been established. Combining it with free musical improvisation would further enhance this effect. The Germans suspect that this is due to increased endorphin release. Endorphin is a natural painkiller released during high exertion, pain, and orgasms. The higher the levels of endorphin, the higher the pain threshold. The release of this painkiller through the combination would be particularly efficient.
Unfortunately, the size of the effect depended on the participant’s personal pain threshold. Of the 22 participants, those with the highest pain thresholds saw the greatest increase after the jym session. Presumably because they are already more effective in releasing endorphins.
There are several possible applications for Jymmin that can be derived from these findings. Patients simply reach their pain threshold later.
Thomas Fritz, head of research group Music Evoked Brain Plasticity MPI CBS
Pain naturally serves a protective function. In cases of chronic pain, however, it can also be inhibiting.
Jymming and Athletic Performance
In addition, the Germans refer to top athletes who would want to increase their pain threshold and thereby their athletic performance. You can debate how desirable that is, but that applies to many things in elite sports.
Preliminary results from Korean research suggest that swimmers who warm up using jymming are faster than after conventional methods. In a pilot study, five out of six swimmers were faster.
Those results are striking. In Jymming, you’re not so much focused on an ‘ideal’ training intensity. After all, you base the intensity on the desired musical result. What would that mean for all those sports scientists whose meticulous training protocols are being outdone by a random jym session? Even if it’s about increased pain tolerance. How often does athletic performance depend on the personal pain threshold? In this case, in swimming. Are they all swimming with pain, or do we also mean the feeling of acidification due to lactic acid? A top athlete isn’t quickly influenced by the latter, it seems to me.
However, I can imagine that this could help in less trained individuals with chronic pain. If, for example, you dare to run or cycle again with that tricky back because of it.
Jym Porn
There are often enough ‘revolutionary’ innovations in the fitness industry. Jymmin seems worthwhile, though. Even if only to have an idea of what that sounds like. If a group of bodybuilders does a jym session, does it sound like death metal?
By the way, I don’t know if I should find the promo video below fantastic or terrible. On the one hand, it seems like a cheesy video from a drag bar in Miami in the 80s. I expect Sonny and Ricardo to walk in any moment. On the other hand, you don’t know if those endorphins are being released because she’s exercising or having an orgasm. Perhaps that’s why a relatively conservatively dressed model was chosen. Can you imagine how Larissa Reis or Paige Hathaway would look on such a device?
References
Thomas H. Fritz, Daniel L. Bowling, Oliver Contier, Joshua Grant, Lydia Schneider, Annette Lederer, Felicia Höer, Eric Busch, Arno Villringer. Musical Agency during Physical Exercise Decreases Pain. Frontiers in Psychology, 2018; 8
Fritz, T. H., Halfpaap, J., Grahl, S., Kirkland, A., and Villringer, A. (2013b). Musical feedback during exercise machine workout enhances mood. Front. Cogn. Sci. 4:921. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00921
Fritz, T. H., Hardikar, S., Demoucron, M., Niessen, M., Demey, M., Giot, O., et al. (2013a). Musical agency reduces perceived exertion during strenuous physical performance. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 110, 17784–17789. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1217252110
