Workout Music

I don’t mean to be melodramatic, but I owe my fitness to rock ‘n’ roll. Seriously, I’m sure I would never have made it to the point of working out as consistently as I do (between 310-330 days a year, with multiple workouts on two-thirds of those days) if it weren’t for the energizing effects of music. I’m not claiming it’s right for everybody, and you can never forget that you have to experiment to find the right path to fitness for you. But for those of you who respond well to music, I think you might be able to benefit from my experience.

I’ve been addicted to pop music since I was a kid; my first record album was the greatest hits of 1966 (when I was nine), featuring such classics as “Cloudy” by the Cyrkle, “Hey Joe” by The Byrds, and “Down in the Boondocks” by Billy Joe Royal (given the “I” aversion of the first two bands, I’m kind of surprised it wasn’t “Bylly Joe Royal”). Since that time, I have consumed thousands and thousands of songs, first through AM radio (WLS was a great station back in the day), FM (WXRT had amazing variety in the 70s and 80s), vinyl records (I still have well over a thousand of these relics), eight-track tapes (the worst of all the delivery systems, but I do own a few un-eaten tapes as well as a player still in its original box for you collectors), cassettes, compact discs, mini-discs (I was one of about four people in the U.S. who thought this technology would catch on), and of course, today’s digital files or mp3s.

Digital is by far the best so far since you can easily mix and match, not to mention being able to edit, songs. Early in my workout career, I was slave to the order of music on record albums, but quickly I came to see the beauty of cassettes and the wonder of the mix-tape (putting different songs together on a single cassette). Yeah, I know; most of you have bad memories of other people making you horrible mix-tapes, especially that not-so-significant other who ruined many songs for you by linking them forever in your mind with the dork who made the tape for you. (Sorry about that.) But my bent, almost from the beginning, was being my own DJ. Of course, I did inflict my share of “important” music on others, insisting that they appreciate songs that I had come to love. As time went on, however, I chose to lavish my attention on someone who truly appreciated my tastes in music—me.

Compact discs, the first digital format, were a quantum leap forward since you could load multiple CDs into your changer, program the play order, press record on your cassette deck, and pretty much have the whole process automated for you. The only problem with that would be the sizable gaps between songs when your play order shifted between discs as it would take some time for the current disc to stop and eject before the next disc could load and play. When you’re working out, the worst thing is a long stretch of silence. You would also have some significant volume changes based on the recording techniques used on different artists’ albums. It wasn’t perfect, but it was so much easier than making sure that you paused the cassette recorder at the end of a song in order to try to find the exact beginning of the next song you were recording, which might entail changing which record was on your turntable.

Now, of course, all you have to do is to down load mp3s onto your computer, copy them, and then put them in any order you want on your mp3 player or phone. Plus, you have on-line services like Spotify or Pandora which will act as your personal DJ and find songs that you might like based on the ones you already do. If you want to add music to your workout routine, we are definitely living in the golden age—when I think about all the time I spent making cassettes that I haven’t listened to in years…

But enough background. If you’re still with me and it’s not just because of my witty, conversational writing style, then perhaps you too think music is sound manna from the gods and share my joy in finding great songs, regardless of how many others realize their greatness. For me, one of the highest compliments I can pay any song is to label it worthy of inclusion for my workouts. My musical creations initially were forty-five minutes (one side of a ninety-minute Maxell cassette) but have now evolved into over six-hundred songs on my four-gig Sansa Clip mp3 player, forty-six hours total of music. Regardless of the delivery system, finding the right songs for working out is a passion of mine. So, the intent of this digression on our road to fitness is to let you know that I will be sharing well-known mega-hits, cult classics, and totally obscure musical finds; and I certainly encourage you to do the same—I’m not suggesting that my collection is encyclopedic or all inclusive, and I would love to add any awesome songs you’ve found that I missed for my workouts. The only criterion all these songs should have in common is that they are good for working out, and I will pledge that any song I recommend will have been used in many workouts before appearing here.

Now, music defies easy classification, but I can at least let you know some of the characteristics of the music I think is conducive to working out. At the most abstract level, I have found the best songs “inspire movement and energy.” Yes, that’s not very helpful for you to understand the music I’m referencing, but it is a starting place. On a more concrete level, I find that allegro (joyful, lively, and fast) best encapsulates the tempo of my favorites. I also gravitate to melody. And to limit my qualities at a brief three, I’d end with complexity (lots of stuff going on) as my favorites’ final most common trait. In brief, I most frequently work out to songs that are fast, melodic, and have “everything but the kitchen sink” production values.

To show you what I mean with something that just about everybody over the age of twenty has heard, Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way,” (1977) would be an excellent example of a song that’s great for working out. It races along, the tune is simple, and Lindsey and the gang fill all the spaces quite well. On a more eclectic level, “Go Your Own Way” also has one of the best one-note guitar solos ever, right up there with Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl.” Anyway, if you’ve never heard it before (OMG!), then you can check it out at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ul-cZyuYq4. I’ve been using this as part of my workouts for over thirty-five years, and each time it comes on, I manage to squeeze out a little more energy to work harder than I had been. While a song like this is hardly an unknown gem, we’ll find quite a few songs of lesser renown as we continue this musical discussion. But, be they obscure bands or top sellers of all time, there are literally thousands of other songs that can make working out much more enjoyable for you.

Before we go any further, you should be warned that I don’t pay much attention to song lyrics and have no problem with an artist’s swearing or describing questionable behavior in a song. I am aware of the issues many do have with that, however, so I will mark any song in these lists with an asterisk (*) should it have either of those characteristics. It might seem odd that for a guy who used to teach English (including poetry and literature) that I don’t care much about a song’s lyrics. Don’t get me wrong; I have wa-ay too much of my precious brain’s hard-drive loaded down with song lyrics. It’s just that I’m not sensitive to or looking for a deep message in my music—it never appealed to me to want to look at my beloved songs too cerebrally. Motion is more about feeling, at least for me, and I’d rather spend what little brain focus I have on my own thoughts, not a song’s meaning.

So, to add a few more examples: Want something almost as old as “Go Your Own Way” but much more obscure? How about “Blood from a Stone”* by The Hooters (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV0R-eI_rqE)? More recent? Here’s “All of This”* by The Naked and Famous (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MR3wfzLOio). Just amazingly weird and awesome? Try “What I Like about Crunk,”* a mashup featuring a combination of The Romantics “What I Like about You,” and Lil Jon’s “Snap Yo Fingers” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIMxJjFfr2U. (Be careful if you watch the video; I’m not sure if the Romantics or Lil Jon’s crew is creepier.) And finally, something idealistic and sweet by Ingrid Michaelson, “Blood Brothers” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHVLpTyGgt0). (This one’s even got a pretty cool video.)

Check those out, and that will give you a good idea if you would care about the specific songs I might recommend later. Ultimately, I’m just looking for songs where the sound projects me forward, much as waves push you toward shore, an irresistible force. We’ll flesh out what I’m talking about a little further in our next musical interlude.