40. 15 Gym Songs
Contrary to all appearances, I’ve been a semi-regular gym goer for the last 20-odd years.
It’s been sporadic and unreliable, this participation of mine. The list of excuses for not going isn’t necessarily very long, but it is terribly effective. It doesn’t take much to wash out last night’s motivation in the cold, bare light of day.
But still, I persevere, riding the cycles between active determination and regretful sloth, with a ready acceptance that if only exercising were as enjoyable as a minimum-chips and couple of dim sims then maybe it’d be easier to get onto that treadmill.
I have to go in the morning, I realised long ago, because the hassle of a busy gym, flagging energy and just not being arsed to go after work all conspired to make that not an option.
Since my son was born, I’ve also found that getting it done early in the day gives me a few extra hours of work before the email avalanche begins, which in turn allows me the freedom to get home comfortably before 5pm on gym days.
So by ‘losing’ (I should say ‘investing’, shouldn’t I?) two hours of time with my family in the morning when they’re sleeping anyway, I get an extra hour at the other end of the day. Not a bad deal I reckon.
What do I do when I actually make it to the gym?
Well, if it’s ’10 Gyms Hacks’ you’re looking for, this is not the blog you’re looking for.
This is a much more mundane list by somebody who enjoys, but is not obsessed by, the process.
More often than not, I’ve forgotten something in my car so I have to trundle back out into the Melbourne cold to get my towel, pass, water bottle or, most nervously, headphones.
Then it’s cardio for as long as I can be bothered.
Being able to download shows to my phone has helped with this most laborious, but critical, part of the process.
Next is weights.
This part I enjoy a lot more. Heaving around increasingly heavy lumps of steel provides an immediate level of feedback for your effort which you don’t get in too many other parts of life.
I love the big lifts, except my bench press is disgustingly inadequate, and it doesn’t take much weight when squatting for my Polynesian thighs to really test the limits of pant stitching.
Deadlifts are fun though.
What do I not do?
Well, ‘enough’, is one answer I suppose.
Stretching. Anything abdominally related.
Oh, and lunges. I really hate lunges.
Anyway, all the way through this patchy relationship, there’s been music.
The perfect gym playlist is a real challenge. It needs to have the tempo right, but it also needs to respect the different intensities required at different times.
The songs need to be crankable, but preferably without the kind of lyrics that provoke any level of conscious thought.
This is why I struggle to listen to podcasts when working out. I tried listening to a Dollop the other day and giggled mid-squat, which made me nearly collapse and drop the bar on my neck.
So, nothing funny then.
My Spotify Gym playlist has some 50 songs or so now, but while they’re effective, they’re also familiar so they become (loud) background music.
Which I guess is ok.
What’s not ok though is the way my gym runs group classes in the same space as the public area.
That’s fine but blaring generic dance music so loud that I can hear it over my already-dangerously-loud headphones is not.
Enough preamble – on to the songs:
Getting Started
1. When a Fire Starts to Burn - Disclosure
I quite like this entire album, but for some reason this song makes me think of struggling on a rower at a gym I was a member of, back when we were (renting) in one of Melbourne’s leafier suburbs.
It was one of those times where the song pushed me to go much longer than I would have otherwise.
And so it’s remained the first cab off the ‘warm-up’ rank.
(That gym was also a place that really drove home that it doesn’t matter how much you spend on your gym clothes if you’re not going to get to real work in them)
2. It’s Time to Party – Andrew W.K.
This song is dumb, loud and basic.
It also happens to be a great track to play at the start of a workout.
The tempo is spot on, the lyrics nice and basic and that beat will get you bopping your head as you stumble to the lockers to drop your keys, before climbing up on to the treadmill.
3. Kickstart My Heart – Motley Crue
I hate hair metal. Hate it. I find it annoying, tacky, pointless and just gross.
But in a weird piece of algorithmic alchemy, this track came on once just as I was about start lifting an untested weight.
Embarrassingly, I cranked it up and tapped my foot through the whole set.
And now I’m cursed with this playing this song regularly in the warm-up phase of a visit to the gym.
Cardio
4. Bomb Intro / Pass That Dutch – Missy Elliott
Now we’re awake, we’re getting into it.
We’re moving along on some piece of machinery designed to simulate an apparently ‘natural’ human movement and needing some extra bounce to get over that first hurdle of resistance.
So I turn to Missy to kick things off.
But it’s best to leave this Introduction to Being Awesome to when you’re already on the machine.
Or else the beat will overwhelm you and before you realise it you’re bouncing up and down the room, desperately fighting the urge to indulge in the odd bit of twerking because, you know, you’re practically a middle-aged man in tired shoes and you should not be twerking – here or anywhere.
5. The Monster – Buddy Rich Ensemble
One real surprise for me was how effective this 11-minute jazz masterpiece is for low intensity cardio.
The tempo – unsurprisingly for Mr Rich – is perfect, propelling you along through the three stages of cardio (boredom, boredom and boredom). The extended solos for each of the instruments are fantastic too, vibrant and expansive and fascinating.
And then there’s the solo, from Rich himself, around the 06:15 mark. Four and a half minutes of on-point drumming, pounding, kicking virtuosity.
You need to like drum solos for this to jive with you, which I do. Very much.
So having this track roll in 15 minutes into a bout of long-form cardio adds a guaranteed 11 minutes to the total journey.
Plus that bit where he’s yelling out to his bandmates, exhorting them to keep up or stay out of his way, makes me smile every time.
(I’m not a Muppets guy, but this also makes me smile in a big way – Animal vs. Buddy Rich)
6. Just a Song About Ping Pong – Operator Please
Final push time.
This song is helpful when you’ve been on that damned cross-trainer for 18 minutes and that voice in your head saying ‘just stop here, you’ve done plenty’ keeps getting louder and louder.
It ups the tempo again and helps grind out those last few minutes that you said you’d do and you know you should but it’d be way easier to just stop here.
It’s also just so-damned-fun. With a video perfectly in line with its sound.
I still don’t know what they mean when they say ‘I bet you know / beef jerky has an aftertaste’ though…
I adored Lorde’s first album (it wasn’t just me either – I can’t think of an artist that’s had a bigger influence on pop music in the last five years) so when I first heard this on the radio, I was ready to love it.
Which I absolutely did. It’s a marvellous piece of pop wrapped in a ‘banger’, as that forgotten radio host put it.
The beat is why it’s useful in a list of gym songs. It keeps bouncing along a forward-leaning groove, helping squeeze out that last bit of effort.
But we’re winding down by this point – finishing off the set, fuzzily stumbling to the wet towel dispenser to try and disinfect this machine (thinking the whole time ‘why didn’t I do this before I touched it and got all the germs – the last person better have wiped it down’), desperately working out if the ‘calories burnt’ amount is anywhere near the calorific payload of last night’s pizza – so it’s possible to listen to the lyrics.
There’s a layer of complexity on this track missing from a lot of more disposable pop, complexity that makes it personal, which in turn makes it great.
Weights
8. Sick, Sick, Sick – Queens of the Stone Age
9. Little Sister – Queens of the Stone Age
Now that we’re away from that cardio equipment, it’s time to start thinking about lifting heavy things.
I’ve found this shift in focus is well-accompanied by a shift in tone. And going from Lorde to Queens of the Stone Age (QOTSA) is a pretty effective turn.
I really wish Josh Homme hadn’t acted like a real dog, because I’ve loved QOTSA for a long time now and find their blend of play and riff’s a lot of fun. I always figured he was pretty cool, but those stories really undermine that feeling.
I’ve referencde this before, but this task of reconciling an artist – human, with all the flaws and nonsense that come with that – with their art – which often carries a deeper, personal meaning – is something any conscious fan is working through at the moment.
That being said, these two songs are a pretty effective ‘reset’ button within the four, safe walls of the gym.
10. Black Skinhead – Kanye West
Speaking of the complications of the artist/art split, we come back to the loud one – Kanye.
Again, I’ve written before about my mixed feelings about Kanye, but these three tracks are outstanding lifting tracks.
They’re intense, loud, extreme and angry. The imagery isn’t universally great, the message isn’t always appropriate, but they’re a pretty effective way to translate anger into exercise.
One of the complications of liking Kanye’s music is that, occasionally, his insights into race relations are outrageously accurate and moving. Black Skinhead is one of these.
It’s just a shame that the sheer volume of noise he makes means it’s so hard to find something he’s said that isn’t utter bollocks.
After our time in The Worst Flat in Melbourne, my housemate and I moved to a nicer unit with a small garage.
In that garage we assembled a variety of workout equipment – one of those all-in-one gym machines filled with pulleys and loose bolts, a pretty solid bench and weight set, a heavy bag and a speed ball, amongst other bits and pieces.
And we would, irregularly, head out there and put that equipment through its paces.
It wasn’t the greatest gym you’d ever see, but it was reasonably effective, especially when combined with any element of cardio. One factor limiting its use, though, was just how much noise punching a heavy bag that’s hanging from a ceiling with a tin roof can make in a quiet suburban street.
Oh, and just how bloody hot a small garage with a tin roof can get on even the mildest of summer days.
I was becoming more familiar with Australian hip hop at this stage, and had Bliss n Eso’s album on repeat.
Which is why, whenever I hear this song, I’m taken back to sitting on that bench, sweating buckets in that hotbox of a garage, with the grinding metallic din of that heavy bag still echoing in my ears.
Cool Down
I know nothing about this song except that it makes me laugh and it’s catchy and clever.
Another tonal shift, what I think is a descending melody makes this song quite a smooth way to transition from angry steel lifting to winding back down to the normal world.
That I can see people using the lines that Barter uses ironically in real life makes it an even more rewarding listen.
“You don’t understand what it’s like to be a man” makes me laugh every time I hear it, because it’s exactly the kind of wilfully blind, wounded exclamation you’d expect from the many, many entitled dood’s out there, lamenting the good ol’ days when men were men and women were just there.
As an aside, I was at a function the other day, chatting and eating scones with a (female) colleague about a serious issue when up rolled a gentlemen best described as blurgh, as he just had to tell her that he doubted such food would help her ‘maintain her figure’.
That I was eating the same thing without comment hardly needs to be said.
“You don’t understand what it’s like to be a man”.
15. All For The Best – Thom Yorke
And we’re at the final song, definitely the most chill but not properly chill, if that makes sense.
Thom Yorke has covered a song by Marc Mulcahy, who I’m not familiar with, as part of a charity album for Mulcahy’s family.
It’s a glitchy tune over moaning horns and adventurous synths.
All with that voice, that damned voice of Yorke’s, dripping grief and regret all over this high-tech foundation.
Then somebody starts whacking together rhythm sticks while running past the microphone, so the sounds flies from left ear to right ear, with Yorke’s voice bathing in the irony of singing ‘all-l-l-l for the best’.
When I do occasionally remember to stretch as part of a proper cool down, having this song helps wash away the equivalent of lactic acid out of my mind, leaving it ready to brace the looming email avalanche.
These are the songs I – currently – listen to when I manage to drag my carcass to the gym.
Some of them have a meaning beyond that, but for most of them I’d think I’m building the meaning as we go, layer by layer, play by play.
If only there were some sort of analogy I could use to drive that point home…
