Many people have it in their new year's resolutions to try and lose some weight over the course of the year. But losing weight, or at least trying to get into a healthier lifestyle, can take a lot of effort, particularly dieting and exercise. For the most part, dieting is the secret to losing weight. However, exercise is what helps build muscle mass and will help maintain a fitter you in the long run.
However, exercising, especially for most people who don't have the time, will usually involve just some basic cardio like walking or jogging, which is for some a rather monotonous activity, which makes many give up on it just after a few runs. One tip that helped me personally to keep up with my daily cardio is to listen to tunes will doing my routine.
Music can be a great motivator. Tunes with the right lyrics can keep your energy up, especially in challenging routines you do for cardio. From personal experience, I find that music with lyrics I can relate to help in keeping me alive in tough workouts, not just during my cardio runs around our village, but also during weight training.
One of the tools you can use is jog.fm, which is an outstanding little site that helps you find songs that match the pace of your run/ jog/ walk. This is important because timing the songs' beats with the cadence of your jog can help keep you going at a certain consistent pace, and sometimes helps in speeding one up in jogs.
To begin, you have to check how fast you do your cardio routine. This can be easily done by approximating how fast it takes for you to finish a kilometer. Try this over a couple of days, and find the average pace of your runs/walks. For instance, last year, at my fittest, it took me around five minutes to finish a kilometer. Just insert this number into jog.fm, and it will find you songs at an appropriate bpm (beats per minute) which will match the cadence of your runs/walks.
For example, a My 5-minute per kilometer pace matches songs which are around the 160-170 bpm mark. Some of my favorite jogging songs last year were:
- Five Minutes to Midnight - Boys Like Girls (164bpm)
- Living Louder - The Cab (176bpm)
- She's Not Afraid - One Direction (84bpm x2)
- Foreign Language - Anberlin (174bpm)
This new year, I wanted to try a different pace, since I stopped jogging for three months. So, I wanted to recondition my body by starting at a slower pace. I approximated a 7.5-minute per kilometer pace, and that means songs that are at 120-130 bpm.
- Closer - Tegan and Sara (138bpm)
- Levels - Avicii (126bpm)
- The Spark - Afrojack (126bpm)
- Beauty and the Beat - Justin Bieber (128bpm)
- Pompeii - Bastille (127bpm)
It really all depends on your individual taste in music, as well as your desired cadence. At the end of the day, the music is there to break an otherwise tiresome and monotonous activity, and make it into something that's not just manageable, but fun at the same time.
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File under: Beat#0013 - Pompeii - Bastille (Virgin Records Ltd)
Last.fm Popularity: 435,245 listeners
Why music bloggers would like it: Catchy indie pop with consistent bass and drum combination leading to an infectious and anthemic hook. Dan Smith's soothing vocals give life to the drama of the song's lyrics.
Why I really like it: This tune is perfect for a light jog. Aside from its fist pump inducing sound, it leads a jogger to a rather nice cadence, good for beginners.
Fave lyrics:
"But if you close your eyes,
Does it almost feel like
Nothing changed at all?"
If you liked this, you might also like:
Chocolate - The 1975 (Dirty Hit Records)
King and Lionheart - Of Monsters and Men (Universal Republic Records)
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