WP3 Draft

Older Audience Gym Flyer:

*Important information for athletes and gym-goers*

Attention to all of our valuable club members,

The care you take of your body before, after, and during exercise is important to reach the maximum benefit from a work out. If you do not give your body adequate time to heal and recover after working out, it is possible to injure yourself and prevent further work to strengthen your body where it needs it most. In order to become your healthiest self and reach your full potential, you must take care of your body after exercising by stretching and rehabbing it in the correct ways. Recent studies have shown that listening to music after exercising improves parasympathetic reactivation, which can result in a faster recovery and reduction in cardiac stress after exercising, which is explained further below.

Post Exercise Heart Rate Variability

Exercise rapidly increases heart rate, so post-exercise shows a rapid decrease in heart rate. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) can non-invasively be used to measure the autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity. This measurement is important because the rate at which the heart rate decreases after exercise can play an important role in cardiac health, and avoiding excessive cardiac work.

Statistical Evidence

In a recent study (Music Attenuated a Decrease in Parasympathetic Nervous System Activity After Exercise), researchers used 26 healthy volunteers, who partook in four different sessions of measured ANS activity. The sessions were one sedentary session, one biking session, one music session, and one biking with music session. The study confirmed the researcher’s hypothesis that music elicits activity in the parasympathetic nervous system—a smaller component of the ANS.

Why is this important to you?

I know that big words about the inner workings of your body may seem a little far fetched in terms of relevance to you. However, listening to music after a workout, specifically sedative music, can facilitate relaxation as well as release tension. It can ultimately make a difference in the rehabilitation of your muscles, and can help to prevent injury. This is why we are spreading knowledge about this new important find.

We hope this information serves you well, and keep up the good work!

Sincerely,

The training team at Rob Gym

Younger audience iphone app:

Reflection

For my WP3, I really wanted to write about some aspect of music, because that is one of my biggest interests. I thought it would be interesting to investigate an article that showed a relationship between music and the brain or music and the body. I found a scholarly article called Music Attenuated a Decrease in Parasympathetic Nervous System Activity after Exercise, which contains the kind of information that I was originally looking for. This article’s main idea is ultimately that there is a surprising relationship between music and the Parasympathetic Nervous System that reveals how music could help people have a faster recovery after working out. Using this main idea, I wanted to transform my article into two pieces that inform different groups to whom this information would be relevant. I picked adults in their 20s-40s, and high school kids, and created a gym trainer’s info sheet, as well as an iphone app that reveals this new find.

My article investigates the relationship between music and the autonomic nervous system activity after exercise. The article uses the IMRAD organizational form to talk about a study. Researches carried out a study in which 26 subjects participated in four randomly chosen sessions throughout four different days of a control session, a biking session, a music session, and a biking with music session. Researchers measured how the heart rate of each subject varied throughout different times of their sessions in order to find out the autonomic nervous system activity, which was operationalized through measuring heart rate. The study found data that suggests music increases parasympathetic nerve activity after exercising. This is important because the increased activity in the parasympathetic nervous system helps muscles with rehabilitation, leading to a faster recovery and decrease in cardiac stress.

The first translation that I did—an app allowing people to monitor their heart rate while listening to music after a workout, and tracking the info— is tailored to high school students, particularly athletes. The exigence for this app is that high school athletes often work themselves to extremes and end up injured, which can often impact their future if they wanted to play sports in college of even afterwards. High schoolers are also usually very keen on technology, and use new apps more than any other age group (cite this). The app itself is brightly colored, in order to appeal to the age group (it does not seem too serious or boring), and the layout is extremely straightforward, with one main home screen and four tabs on the bottom, titled “music”, “heart rate”, “progress”, and “info page”. The directions for acquiring accurate heart rate information are also easy to follow because the home screen contains a message that says “place thumb here”, and a space for the thumb. The kids will not be bombarded with hard to decipher information about the science behind why the music will help them recover more quickly because if they want to read up a little on it, the main ideas are on the info page. The idea of the app itself is relevant to high school athletes, and the aesthetics of the app are intended to reach out to this specific age group.

The moves that I made in order to transform the scholarly article mostly have to do with simplifying the information, and making it accessible for a younger audience. To do this, I simplified larger concepts without taking away any information, by replacing scientific jargon with more easily understood language. For example, ________. I also took on a very conversational tone, so that kids of a high school age could relate to the writers of the app, rather than thinking of them as researchers who do not really know what teens need in their lives. I used words to directly addressed the audience, using “you”, and I also ______. I asked rhetorical questions to address the problem at hand of injuries happening to much to pull the app users in and make them see how useful this app could be to them. I also left out aspects of the study that would be irrelevant to a high-schooler, such as the methods and statistical analysis; I instead focused the results and parts from the introduction and discussion, to give the users the information that is most relevant to them.

The second translation that I did had some similarities to the first, however had more differences because it was tailored to an older audience, who use trainers at a gym club. The exigence of this flyer is that adults can have a harder time finding time to work out, and maximizing the benefits from their time because they are extremely busy with work and possibly kids, and tend to be less active than younger people. Because of this, I created a flyer that explains how beneficial it can be to listen to certain music after working out in order to recover more quickly. The flyer contains a title/address to those who should listen, that reads “Attention to all valuable club members”, which is then proceeded by a short info/summary paragraph. There are a few more background info paragraphs with larger titles, and then a salutation. In order to appeal to these adults, I made a flyer because when this group of people goes to the gym, they will likely see it and want to know what information it has on it.

Most moves that I made were based on making the flyer concise and intriguing, while making the source seem credible. To make it concise, I had to take out a lot of irrelevant info from the scholarly article, such as the specific statistics, and some of the background info. For example, I summarized this sentence ________, into this ________, which changed the jargon to be more understandable, while still appearing knowledgeable. I still however included a little info about the study, as well as the background info, in order to appeal to the readers’ ethos and gain credibility. I used a professional tone, without being sterile, and spoke politely in order to not transcend any boundaries with the customers. For example, ______. The colors and sizes of the titles were meant to catch the viewer's’ eyes, and keep their attention, while the spaces in between paragraphs and relatively large font were intended to guide the reader through the flyer. This flyer is intended to appeal to adults of a certain age group, by using the various moves mentioned above.

Works Cited

Jia, Tiantian, et al. "Music Attenuated A Decrease In Parasympathetic Nervous System Activity After Exercise." Plos ONE11.2 (2016): 1-12. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 May 2016.