I have hand weights. And a yoga mat. I have those big squishy balls that help with sit-ups. I have resistance bands. I have a nifty chin up bar that hooks onto a door frame. I even have workout tapes to motivate.
But here’s my news flash. Exercising is infinitely better with music.
I will even go so far as to say that exercising will happen more often for me when I remember this fact.
Hard to do when swimming, but for those terra firma moments, having someone grooving in your ear makes the pain not as acute. You lose yourself in the moment (if it’s loud enough), and it’s not about your knees or your lungs, but about Justin Timberlake talking about getting your sexy back.
It’s not rocket science, the idea of concentrating on something pleasurable to make something painful less so. The guys on Mythbusters did an experiment about whether swearing like a sailor helped a subject tolerate pain (in their case, inserting a hand and arm into a bucket of ice water). Turns out screaming “bunny!!” at the top of your lungs is not as satisfying as screaming something that sounds an awful lot like “another sucker.” Really. They tested it.
So if, like me, you’re looking to do the right thing more often and move your body, plug up those natural sounds of the forest, those bird calls and crunching dirt sounds underfoot, and crank the Beyonce.
Poking Around Life 