Rolling Stones

Not long ago I had the opportunity to search for “motivational” songs on the internet. What a disappointment! With a few exceptions it was a miasma of things with which I’m not familiar, things that are not my cup-of-tea, and things that I find downright unpleasant.

I’ve been working out for about two months and hopefully, I’m in a groove that I can maintain. I have two main principles. Keep it short so I don’t have the excuse of not being able to fit the workout into my day and enjoy some music along the way.

Indeed, making playlists for the workouts has been a big part of maintaining my interest in the process. In part because of this, I’ve been spending more time listening to music enjoying music more than I have in years. This inspired me to share.

I generally construct a playlist from the following principles.

I start with choosing band or a theme. There’s no particular criteria other then what I feel like listening to at that moment.
I look for 15-17 minutes of intense, up-tempo songs which I follow up with one less intense “cool down” cut. Ideally that should take us beyond the end of the workout.
I don’t avoid the big hits but I try for lesser known tracks and attempt to pull from a diversity of sources.

Just before I made this playlist, I saw a tweet about a little league baseball team that had a theme for each player when the came up to bat. It asked what you would want your theme song to be. I immediately thought “Street Fighting Man.” I had to rethink it when I realized that the sound track in my head was “One Hit to the Body.” Because those were in my head, they were the nucleus of the playlist. Later, for a slightly longer workout, I swapped “Street Fighting Man” and “Connection” for unplugged versions from the 19 Stripped sessions. That makes this a playlist entirely recorded after I became a fan in 1984.

This playlist includes: