Playlists or, How I Survive My Workouts

A few days ago, I hopped on the treadmill for my usual workout. The machine was working great, as usual, as I began to start on my four mile run. During the first tenth of a mile, I plugged my headphones into the treadmill to add some music to my workout. By the time I approached the half-mile mark, I noticed how demotivated I was.  I just wasn't mentally willing to finish the remaining three and a half miles of my workout. I knew exactly why...I had been listening to the same exact playlist in the same exact order for all of my workouts over the past three weeks. I had listened to the same tracks over and over again, that the effect of the music on my motivation was non existent. The order in which the music played did not even matter, because I wore out the playlist until it was unbearable.

I stopped the machine, grabbed my belongings, and headed back to my apartment (definitely convenient for me to do, considering my gym is only right down the hallway from my apartment). I opened up my laptop, hooked up my phone and began to download an entirely new set of songs to a new running playlist. After the download was complete, I grabbed my things again and went back down to the gym...only to find that all of the treadmills were occupied (such a shame). I walked back to my apartment, frustrated of course, waited thirty more minutes until I was able to go back to the gym and triumphantly claim a vacant running machine!

The feeling you get when claiming a treadmill!

I connected my phone to the system via wi-fi and plugged in my headphones and WENT TO TOWN. The songs that I downloaded in my playlist were all throwbacks, but upbeat. There was everything from Journey to Salt n' Pepa, with Biggie, Heavy D, and even the Ramones thrown in between. I set my playlist on the shuffle function to give me a bit of variety.

I'm sure the other people in the gym must have thought that I was a little insane, because I really got into the music that I was listening to, while completing the workout. At one point, I even held one of my arms up as I was running, pretending that I was carrying one of the small Olympic torches into a stadium, to light the mother-of-all Olympic torches. Then, my power song, "The Time," by The Black Eyed Peas came on shuffle, as I was ending my run, just to pull me through the last quarter mile.

My playlist means so much to me while I'm working out. There have been plenty of times where the perfect song started playing and it re-vamped my motivation midway through my workout. Certain playlists can change your perspective on an entire routine. For me, depending on what I'm listening to, I pretend that I'm either running from a tornado, or sometimes even running next to Mufasa on an African savannah. 

A lot of people think that you only have to stick to one genre of music when creating a workout playlist, but the more variety you have, the more chances you have of being able to re-motivate yourself consistently throughout a workout. I even know people who plan their playlists, based on the different points of intensity throughout their planned workouts. If they know that they are going to be doing some extreme sprinting, crunches or heavy lifting, they choose music that will stay upbeat for the duration of that particular exercise. They will choose music with less frequent bpm (beats per minute), for the cool-down sections of their routines.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post! As always, Peace, Love and Nutella!!