1st International ICST Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare

Research Article

Enhancing Exercise Performance through Real-time Physiological Monitoring and Music: A User Study

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1109/PCTHEALTH.2006.361660,
        author={Nuria  Oliver and Lucas  Kreger-Stickles},
        title={Enhancing Exercise Performance through Real-time Physiological Monitoring and Music: A User Study},
        proceedings={1st International ICST Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare},
        publisher={IEEE},
        proceedings_a={PERVASIVEHEALTH},
        year={2007},
        month={5},
        keywords={Accelerometers  Biomedical monitoring  Feedback  Heart rate  Heart rate measurement  Mobile handsets  Physiology  Prototypes  Software prototyping  Stress},
        doi={10.1109/PCTHEALTH.2006.361660}
    }
    
  • Nuria Oliver
    Lucas Kreger-Stickles
    Year: 2007
    Enhancing Exercise Performance through Real-time Physiological Monitoring and Music: A User Study
    PERVASIVEHEALTH
    IEEE
    DOI: 10.1109/PCTHEALTH.2006.361660
Nuria Oliver1,*, Lucas Kreger-Stickles2,*
  • 1: Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA
  • 2: University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
*Contact email: nuria@microsoft.com, lucasks@cs.washington.edu

Abstract

We present our findings in using musical feedback to enhance exercise performance by means of a prototype named MPTrain. MPTrain is a mobile and personal system that users wear while exercising. It consists of a set of physiological sensors (heart rate and accelerometer) wirelessly connected to a mobile phone carried by the user. MPTrain's software allows the user to enter a desired workout in terms of desired heart rate stress over time. It then assists the user in achieving the desired exercising goals by: (1) constantly monitoring his/her physiology (heart rate in number of beats per minute) and movement (speed in number of steps per minute); and (2) selecting and playing music (MP3s) with specific features that will guide him/her towards achieving the desired workout goals. In this paper, we focus on the novel aspects of the MPTrain system and describe in detail our findings from a 9-week runner study, where participants ran with MPTrain for up to four 42-minute sessions. The runner study corroborated three hypotheses that we were interested in exploring: the MPTrain system (1) significantly improved the ability of runners to achieve the predefined workout goal, (2) made the experience more enjoyable and (3) increased the runners' perception of the workout's efficacy