Ready for a super band-nerdy moment? I get really irritated if I'm out of step with music. Regardless of if it's piped-in music playing at the mall, the background dinner music at a restaurant, or the beat of the dance floor at a downtown bar, I need to be stepping with my left foot on counts 1, 3, 5, and 7, and my right foot on beats 2, 4, 6, and 8. Ken Dye, Director of Bands at Notre Dame, would be so proud. Lately, I've taken this dorky obsession a step farther and created a gym playlist that will optimize my workout and force me to speed up my mile time if I want to stay in step!
Per Google (and my experiments on my apartment gym's treadmills), songs at 150-170 bpm average out to a ten-minute mile pace. So I nerded out and spent a lot of time with Google figuring out the bpm of my favorite gym jams, and put together a playlist of only songs in that window. Here are some of my faves:
Taylor Swift, "Shake it Off"
Neon Trees, "Everybody Talks"
The Fratellis, "Chelsea Dagger"
Pharrell Williams, "Happy"
Hall and Oates, "You Make My Dreams"
A-ha, "Take on Me"
Maroon 5, "Harder to Breathe"
Boys Like Girls, "The Great Escape"
Del Amitri, "Roll to Me"
Metro Station, "Shake It"
T.I., "Whatever You Like"
Trey Songz/Nicki Minaj, "Bottoms Up"
I'm definitely not going to lie and say this is always the prettiest workout--a ten minute mile, for me, in my current state of fitness, gets ugly pretty fast. That said, a little treadmill dancing to "Chelsea Dagger" or, literally, "Shake It Off"ing mades the minutes fly by so much faster.
...Ultimate band nerd moment? Sometimes I end my workout with the drum cadence to the Trot...the cadence where this happens:
Now if that isn't one of the prettiest things you've ever seen, you don't know squat. I don't actually DO the trot, but even just hearing it gives me the perfect adrenaline rush to kick the treadmill up a few notches and, as Jillian would say, "finish strong!"