The Pursuit of Healthiness

The Pursuit of Healthiness
Your Guide to Getting Healthy

Monday, May 14, 2012

Tip #28: Match You Workout, Beat for Beat!

I do like to work out but sometimes my drive to exercise falls flat. I've gone on a stationary bike everyday for the last week. I started at a half hour Monday and Tuesday and I could hardly make it through, going just over 12 miles an hour. Suddenly, in the following days, I was pedalling over 15 mph and lasting over an hour. What made the sudden change? Jog fm.

I recently read about this workout saving device in Health magazine and I had to check it out right away. Now we all know that working out to music keeps the mind occupied and makes you exercise longer but it turns out the music you listen to helps you keeps you going as well. The first page on Jog fm has you type in how fast you want to go running, but if that's not the workout of your choice, don't be discouraged. You can also find music specifically designed for walking and biking.

Best part? You don't have to buy these all these songs, although the website does give you links to where you can do so. Thanks to an application called Spotify, you can link your accounts on Jog fm and Spotify to listen to music while you workout. You can even create your own workout playlist on Jog fm or listen to one someone else created.

An issue for me while I was exercising was that I didn't know what songs would be good for me to bike to. I usually listened to Rob Thomas and Maroon 5, so I looked the songs up on Jog fm and found that the majority of songs I listened to weren't fast enough. Most of them were less than 120 beats per minute (bpm). For biking, you should stay between 135 and 170 bpm. For running, 147 to 169 bpm. For walking, 137 to 139 bpm.

I found that the best Maroon 5 songs for me were The Sun at 160 bpm, Wake Up Call at 164 bpm and Harder to Breathe at 150 bpm and the best Rob Thomas songs were Streetcorner Symphony at 164 bpm, Little Wonders at 167 bpm and This is How a Heart Breaks at 140 bpm. These sons have come up pretty often on my Spotify account lately but my playlists aren't those alone. There's pop and rock and top 40s and '90s and '80s and '70s, whatever you like. My playlists have been a mix of everything. Thanks to Jog fm and Spotify, I've stopped getting tired and bored during my workouts and can work out without getting so bored that all I'm thinking is that I'm in so much pain I've got to stop. Now I'm thinking, "You know what? How about three more songs?"