exercise music

talk about your favorite exercise music itt! what is the perfect thing to listen to while doing a certain exercise? talk about why and your experience with it. does the intensity track with your workout? does tempo match your pace? what about the music works with the activity? unexpected / surprise matches are always nice!

lifting weights and metal - like peanut butter and jelly. a favorite lately is the new exhumed album, red asphalt - a very fun roller coaster of gore grind and death metal. it helps me lighten up, zero out my mind and ignore all the gym lookers.

unexpected match recently: trail running to "hosiannah mantra" by popol vuh. i'm finding that running music doesn't necessarily have to be relentlessly propulsive for it to hit.

i like doing yoga to more instrumental music. the ghosted releases have given me a lot of mileage over the past few months. now i'm on to caterina barbieri for a more gothic flavor.

45:33 to thread!

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath on the stair machine. Nothing is better to soundtrack mindlessly sludging up ~108 flights of stairs.

i honestly prefer silence. this is partly out of practicality - i dislike earbuds and wired headphones can get in the way of bodily movement/equipment usage, plus earphone sweat ewww - and partly because i find the sensory combination of even propulsive beat-heavy music and intensive exercise mutually affects each other in ways that make my experience of each less enjoyable, weirdly. there's exceptions, e.g. an aerobics class where the beat of the music functions as a motivator, but when i'm on my own i treat exercising as a time to kind of inhabit my own mind/thoughts for a spell.

When I started going to the gym a few months ago, I made myself a playlist full of Rollins Band and Prong and Helmet, with the thought that this music would help me heft plates on bars, but I only listened to it once or twice.

I took many of the songs from the Cheesy '80s Songs About Heart and Soul and Overcoming and Winning and Givin' it All That You Got (RIYL Action Movies and Training Montages and Cocaine) thread into a playlist and have used that for all sorts of fitness over the past few years.

Lately, I've mostly just been working out to the Grateful Dead, but that's because I'm on a streak where they're mostly all I've been listening to for the past few months. Not necessarily because it is well-suited to exercise.

I used to listen to Merzbow on a full PA system while riding the exercise bike in the basement, it was perfect. Sadly I am slacking on exercise at the moment.

I never listen to music when I run outdoors, but in a gym (treadmill, stairmaster, rowing machine, etc.) I listen strictly to playlists I've compiled with typically short (3-4 minute) songs, regardless of genre. I need the music to turn over, long repetitive songs just don't do it for me in that context.

i honestly prefer silence. this is partly out of practicality - i dislike earbuds and wired headphones can get in the way of bodily movement/equipment usage

That said, i used to enjoy Phaedra by Tangerine Dream when on the elliptical... it has a nice buildup that would hit at the right moment.

For the last few years, my primary form of exercise has been yoga and, to a lesser extent, pilates classes. 75% of the time it sounds like the instructor just googled “yoga class spotify playlist” because it’s mostly generic slop. Other times, you can tell some instructors really think about how music - and sound more generally - contributes to the experience, not just as an add on.

I think that good music can boost a class, but bad music can ruin an otherwise good class. For yoga, I find music is best used when it’s at a surface level: it fills up empty space but doesn’t draw your attention away from your body and breath. You don’t notice it, but would notice if it cut out. The best examples have been long ambient tracks, sometimes single compositions that are played/looped through the whole class, played at a volume you can speak quietly over.

I don’t care for higher-energy songs meant to amp you up at peak moments, or songs with distinct vocals, or the gamut of new age cliches you’d expect. Silence would be better.