Fitness Buff Tunes In to New Set of Melodies

There are music tapes for dancers, diners and lovers. And nearly every form of exercise is or can be done to a melody.

But James Sundquist claims he has come up with a new beat for fitness buffs.

The 40-year-old musician, composer and recreational runner of Eugene, Ore., has produced a tune and put it on 64 tapes--each with a different cadence, ranging from 100 to 220 footfalls (or beats) per minute. The beat is selected according to a person’s physical condition or his or her targeted heart rate during exercise.

Sundquist got his foot into the fitness world by recording the “plop plop” of runners’ footfalls. He put the recorded sounds through a computerized process called digital time compression, which slows or speeds a beat without losing pitch, tone or overall musical sound. The result was audio tapes called “Music in Sync.”

Entrepreneur Sundquist likens his company to a pharmacy: a music pharmacy that fills prescriptions for individuals with special exercise programs.

Dr. Jerold A. Hahn, a cardiologist in Eugene who is familiar with the tapes, thinks the word prescription may be a little misleading. “I don’t know if it would evolve to the point of a cardiologist prescribing these tapes,” Hahn said, “but they could be a useful adjunct in an exercise program.”

Determining Rate

Sundquist says the cadence that creates the targeted heart rate can be determined by a physician during a treadmill test or through fitness clinics. Or you can select the pace of the tape by counting the number of total footsteps during a 60-second period of exercise. There are other means to calibrate the pace for swimming, cycling, rowing and other cadent sports.

To help in the right selection, Sundquist has developed a Diagnostic Rate Tape, which contains one minute of music at even rates from 110 to 214 beats per minute.

“Too many people are using jarring rock music, so their feet tend to hit the ground with high impact, and this is proven to be actually harmful,” Sundquist adds.

Not everyone agrees with talk and studies about high-impact dangers for runners. Dr. Steven Blair, an epidemiologist with Aerobics International Research Society, a Dallas-based nonprofit group, sees all the talk about high-impact exercise as one more marketing trend.

“Showing cause and effect between high-impact activity and injury,” Blair said, “is full of problems.”

Dr. Peter Francis, an associate professor in physical education at San Diego State University and a specialist in biomechanics, agrees that defining low- versus high-impact exercise is a problem. But he thinks trends can be isolated, such as an increase in certain kinds of injuries, such as back problems, attributable to high-impact exercise.

Only One Tune

Thus far, Sundquist’s tapes offer only one tune, which he describes as a “combination of triumphant Olympic and Wimbledon horn, New Age electronics, jazz fusion and avant-garde classical.

Though he doesn’t see the tapes as a breakthrough or major contribution to injury prevention, Dr. Steven Roy, a sports-medicine physician in Eugene, thinks they could be helpful in rehabilitation of a sports injury and in training, for example, on a cross-country ski track.

People who work out on tread mills and stationary bikes at health clubs will benefit most from the tapes, according to Randy Huntington of Santa Monica, a former UC Berkeley and University of Oregon track coach, who will be marketing the tapes in Southern California.

Music in Sync tapes sell for $14.98 (and the Diagnostic Rate Tape for an additional $14.98) and are available only by mail from Medical and Sports Music Institute of America, 1200 Executive Parkway, Suite 450, Eugene, Ore. 97401.

“The whole world will survive if they don’t have my tapes,” Sundquist said, “but with fitness being so important and concern with injuries so high, what’s $14.98?”