Move

Music is my lifeblood, my solace and my drive, and one of the few things that can unequivocally energize my body and mind. Throughout life I’ve had a playlist for just about everything – from the lively, bass-heavy songs I blared to get hyped up for drumline competitions, to the brooding, melancholy vibes that carried me through my first heartbreak (and several since). As for my workout playlist, it wasn’t until I finally hung up my cymbals and kicked off my white Dinkles for the last time that I actually created one.

When I was in marching band, performing was my workout and the halftime show was my playlist. I drew my motivation from the roar of 80,000 strong in Doak Campbell Stadium, and the unique satisfaction that comes from striving to create something beyond yourself and your peers. After I graduated, I didn’t know how to exercise without a drum harness pressing into my chest or cymbals strapped to my hands. Gym machines were just contorted metal contraptions, their workings an inside joke that I wasn’t privy to. It wasn’t until I met Ashley in vet school – who was affectionately dubbed ‘Gym Mom’ by our friend group – that I started to learn. The first lesson: I truly had no concept of what a structured workout was like. The second lesson: I needed music.

My life has been fluid, ever shaped and influenced by the world and people around me. My workout playlist is no different. Some songs, like some people, have been there from the beginning and will probably stay for life. Others have been dismissed; their beats no longer resonating in my bones like they used to, or their melodies not quite casting the spark that I thought they might. Several still have been added as I discovered them, and their ultimate fate remains up in the air.

As my playlist currently stands, the first song is the one that plays while I do my five-minute warmup on the elliptical or treadmill. Like the warmup itself, this song gets my heart drumming and my blood pumping; it sets the tone – it instills a warrior-like mentality that overrides my aching muscles from workouts past. The song: Move by Saint Motel.

It begins with a driving, upbeat opening that blends disco, big-band jazz, and modern pop. That intro alone – no matter where I am – is usually enough to put a slight sway into my shoulders and hips, but when I’m on that elliptical it makes me want to push, to fly, to move. While the lyrics in their entirety spin a tale of unrequited love, the chorus, which matches the intro melody, has the following repeated lyrics:

Gotta get up, I gotta get up

Move

It’s the perfect start to the workout.

As that song fades, two minutes still remain in my warmup. It’s met by the following intro lyrics:

Reluctantly crouched at the starting line

Engines pumping and thumping in time

The green light flashes, the flags go up

Churning and burning, they yearn for the cup

I follow Move with The Distance by Cake because the alternative rock vibes let me come down a bit from my exuberant start, while still carrying over the energy to my actual workout. Not to mention, there’s just something about finishing out your warmup while listening to its chorus:

He's going the distance

He's going for speed

She's all alone (all alone)

All alone in her time of need

Because he's racing and pacing and plotting the course

He's fighting and biting and riding on his horse

He's going the distance

Then it’s time to really work. It’s leg day, and I’m going to need every scrap of mental fortitude that I can muster to get through Gym Mom’s routine. It starts with alternating Barbell Deadlifts and Bulgarian Split Squats – 12 reps of each, three sets, 1 minute break between each set. The Distance is long-gone, and playing now is one of my more recent additions: The New Workout Plan by Kanye West.

I would have never heard this song if it wasn’t for Gym Mom convincing me and a couple of our other friends to go to UF’s Hip Hop Fitness class, but it immediately became one of my favorites. I loved the routine that the instructor made for it, and the song’s snappy, jaunty beat also stokes that fiery energy in me.

Kanye brings me about halfway through the deadlift and split squat sets, but as he takes his leave I need something stronger, faster. More potent. My quads and glutes are screaming - begging me to stop the torment and let them be. I desperately want to listen but the next song drowns them out, filling me with a frenzied, almost manic drive. I pick up the dumbbells, and grind out the remaining sets to Kernkraft 400 by Zombie Nation.

It may have been a FSU Seminoles game, a Tampa Bay Buccaneers game, or even a Tampa Bay Lightning game where I first heard Kernkraft 400, but ever since then the song has held the intense power of desperation. It feels like a 4th and goal when you’re down by 6 and there’s five seconds left on the clock. It feels like having to kill a power play late in the 3rd period when you’re tied. It makes me want to give everything that I have - to connect that pass, to clear that puck, to force those weights to move despite my muscles’ protests. It’s a shot of pure adrenaline.

Finally, mercifully, the last set ends. I feel horrible and fantastic and exhausted all at the same time, but the workout is far from over. Up next is Goblet Squats and Dumbbell Pulse Lunges – both challenging in their own right but a welcome reprise from the previous torture. At least at first. It’s another three sets with 12 reps of each, a minute to rest/pant in between, and there’s no better time for Liquid Tension Experiment.

LTE is a little-known progressive metal band that was formed by Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater. The song Acid Rain, from their second album, is six and a half minutes of pure rock mastery. The guitar licks are phenomenal, Portnoy lights it up on the drums, and the spunky melodies carry me through that second round of squats and lunges. The sets fly by, and then - just like that - I’m halfway through the workout.

My glutes, which were desperately hoping they had paid their dues for the day, are about to get a rude awakening with Cable Pullthroughs and Cable Donkey Kicks (same reps, same sets as the others). Now I’m not saying that Cable Pullthroughs put you in a compromising position, but when you’re standing there - bent over, booty stuck out like you’re waiting for the “plumber” to “lay some pipe” – Bad Girlfriend by Theory of a Deadman just hits a little bit different…and I love it.

There I am, cranking out the glute workouts like I’m Nicki Minaj, and feeling like a rockstar with that killer guitar solo in my ears. It certainly makes the reps easier, but as the last lick draws to an end I’m starting to hurt again; the little voice in the back of my head, that personification of my muscles, trying to convince me that I don’t need to push on. My playlist counters with a new song, one that doesn’t need fancy musicianship or an anchoring experience to move me. Instead, Get Busy by Sean Paul just makes me want to dance.

You know when you’re out dancing with your friends, and that one song comes on – the one that grips your bones and makes you pull out all of the crazy moves? That’s Get Busy for me. I almost forget that there’s other people around, and I certainly don’t care if anyone’s watching. I just want to feel the beat.

As it turns out, that song has the same effect when I’m working out. The lunges and the squats become my dancing, the gym transforms into my personal club, and I don’t care if anyone sees me bobbing my head or bouncing in my shoes as I go.

Last but not least, it’s time for Leg Extensions and Lying Hamstring Curls (same reps, same sets, you know the drill). I love Leg Extensions – my quads are definitely my strongest muscles, and I can load some pretty impressive weight on the machine if I do say so myself; about 90 pounds. On the other hand, I hate Lying Hamstring Curls with a passion. I despise feeling like a weakling when I’m working out, and there’s a cruel irony that my strongest exercise is also paired with my absolute weakest. I can only put 10 pounds on that machine. The motion of the exercise also feels extremely awkward, and for some reason my knees like to pop and grind with each rep. I hate it.

The level of distraction I need to forget the fresh hell that is Lying Hamstring Curls can only come from one source: my favorite song. Voices by Disturbed speaks to me on a basal level, my sympathetic nervous system firing up from the second that I hear the first base guitar note. The lyrics are dark and Disturbed, and the bridge gives me goosebumps every time:

I can hear the voice but I don't want to listen

Strap me down and tell me I'll be all right

I can feel the subliminal need to be one with

The voice and make everything all right

Voices isn’t long enough to take me through all three sets, so the workout-proper ends much the way it began – with Saint Motel, and my second-favorite song. My Type is likewise a disco-jazz infusion of pop, and its groove exudes pure happiness. Voices is the song that I blast to feel powerful, while My Type is the one that I crank up when I’m in the best of moods. It’s a great counterbalance to my loathing of Lying Hamstring Curls, and the time finally comes when the last set is complete.

All that remains now is the cooldown, AKA the ab workout – a circuit of Russian Twists, Planks, and Toe Touches for 30 seconds each, repeated three times. The first song on deck? Broke Leg by Tory Lanez. This song was another Hip Hop Fitness find, and while I didn’t care much for the routine that came with it, I do love the peppy bounce to the song’s beat. It almost makes me forget that my abs are dying. Almost.

The last song, the one that finds me covered in a thick sheen of sweat, gasping for breath as I writhe back and forth to the Russian Twists, my whole body pleading for relief, is Gone, Gone, Gone by Phillip Phillips. Wednesday and Friday nights used to find me doing karaoke at a country dive bar on the outskirts of Tallahassee called Just One More. I used to sing Gone, Gone, Gone, and the impulse to try and sing it while I’m finishing those last sets is almost overpowering.

I did try it once when I had the place all to myself – it didn’t end well. I could barely breathe let alone sing, so I just honked like some kind of strange goose that was having a seizure. Nevertheless, the uplifting melody and driving beat is just what I need to power through the last part of the ab circuit.

After the workout my grouchy, aching muscles gripe and make their displeasure known, but another part of me feels smugly accomplished. I wrestled my physical being into compliance, pushing and moving myself beyond what I thought was possible - and it wouldn’t have happened without my workout playlist.