Although this bank holiday Monday isn’t the ideal day to be thinking of exercise and of shedding those Winter pounds, it might give you comfort to know that MP3 players can help you get fit and shape up for the Summer month’s lazing around on the beach.

Melanie Shernofsky is a group fitness co-ordinator at the Mansfield Club in Montreal, Canada. She says that clients in their fitness centre rely heavily on MP3 players and the inspirational power of music to help them through a difficult routine.

Nine out of 10 people workout with an iPod or MP3 player.

Although it has to be acknowledged that MP3 players haven’t created the surge in fitness fanatics using music to help through routines. For the last few decades music has been used in roller rinks and aerobics classes, whether it be Buddy Holly, the Pointer Sisters or Amy Winehouse.

Music helps people concentrate on what they are doing and block out the physical pain of exercise.

Jim Gavin is a clinical psychologist of health at Concordia University:

Music takes us away from the physical discomfort and the process of exercise itself. Music tends to separate us from what we are physically doing and leads us further away from how we are feeling.

Psychologically people find it easier to work out to music as it makes the time fly by quicker and detracts from the monotony of the task in hand, though there is no data to suggest that listening to music can make you work out for longer.