LittleMissSunshine
Playlists for Non-Exercisers
Jul 18, 2011
So in my last post, I mentioned how I'm a little psycho when it comes to playlists:
I'm a big fan of working out to music, so much so that I actually create playlists with songs that I've assigned elliptical speed values to so that it starts with slower songs for the warm-up and cool down phases and progresses to more upbeat songs for the actual "level 7" phase.
Maybe it's just the Libra in me, but it just breaks my brain when my stride cadence isn't in sync with whatever song my Zune decided to pull out of the shuffle crapshoot. This isn't a new thing, mind you... I first came up with this little system to "mitigate the risk" (pardon the corporate speak, but it fits) of this happening around 10 years ago when I was using a portable disc player. Man, was that labor intensive compared to now with MP3s... but I digress.
Point being, I was going to pop on here with a post about peppering your playlists with songs that inspire and motivate you and make some suggestions of my own (that'll be another post), but then it ocurred to me that it might be more helpful to outline the afore-mentioned cadence-to-music syncing thing as a follow up to my last post. Not only does going through this playlist process align your movements to the music, it's also a great way to get a sense for the different levels of exertion so you can associate a song with that level 7 or 8 you're striving toward.
Where my last post showed you what to look for when exercising, this one tells you how to apply it to create a personalized work out that works for you (pun intended).
So, if you're interested, here's how it's done
1.) Open your music software and create a new playlist (if you're old school, proceed to step 5 and in addition to pen and paper, take your portable CD player and a stack of discs with you).
2.) Add whatever songs you want, but try to do a mix of slow, medium and fast songs -- the order doesn't matter... yet.
3.) Keep an eye on how much time your playlist covers, cater it to meet your typical workout duration or a bit longer if you want to be able to skip a song or two here and there.
4.) Sync this new playlist to your player.
5.) The next time you're on the elliptical (you can walk with your new playlist later, you need to assign a speed value first), bring a pen and pad of paper with you.
6.) Play this new playlist in sequential order -- turn off shuffle.
7.) Find the beat and move to it... when you've got a consistent rhythm going, notice your speed value: mph, strides per minute, whatever (NOTE: songs that seem super fast can also be slow if you skip a beat between strides).
8.) Write that speed value down and either finish out the song if it's comfortable, or move on to the next one.
9.) Lather, rinse repeat... write down values for each of the songs on your playlist.
10.) After your workout, go back to the playlist as it appears in your software... right click on the song title and choose "Rename"
11.) Edit each song so the speed value appears before the title, e.g. 2.2 - Cornflake Girl.
12.) Manually re-arrange the songs with the lowest value first, building up to the highest value and then one or two low value songs at the end (cool down).
13.) Re-sync this playlist with your player with the newly revamped song order.
You now have a customized work out that will help you determine where your level 7 and 8 cadences are. After you've done this work out once, you should know which songs you could maintain the speed of comfortably on and which ones were above your ability. If you have too many that are too fast, restart this whole process with slower songs and create a new playlist that's more your speed.
Also keep in mind that songs that seem like they're too slow can still have a home in your playlist if you just increase the resistance on the elliptical to make them more challenging. If you're starting from square one, I recommend keeping the resistance at the lowest setting until you get to a point where you notice that where you were once hitting level 7 or 8 at song X, it now it feels more like a 5 or 6. Once that happens, you know you're ready to increase the resistance to make it more challenging. Over time, you'll find that you need to both increase resistance and add songs with higher speed values in order to reach and maintain level 7 or 8.
Over time as you "audition" more and more songs, you'll have a wider variety of speeds to choose from and you'll be better able to cater your workouts to meet your (hopefully!) evolving need to be challenged.
If you try this and come up with a playlist you love, be sure to come back and post it so anyone else reading can try it out!
