Moving to the Beat: Synchronous Playlists (Part One)

Have you ever tried to sync your movements to music during a workout? Maybe you danced to music in a hip hop or Zumba class, or maybe you tried to run faster by matching your steps to the beat of an especially quick piece of music. Or, maybe you’ve never actually used music synchronously during a workout, but you’ve always been curious as to whether it would help you achieve your exercise goals.

If you’re at all interested in working out to a beat, you’re in luck, because today we’re sharing two playlists of synchronous exercise music. (If you are also interested in asynchronous exercise music, don’t forget to take a look at last week’s blog post, too!) The first playlist contains eight pieces of classical and soundtrack music with tempi around 150 BPM, and the second playlist consists of eight songs with tempi near 160 BPM. Try the first playlist if you run a 10-minute mile or cycle at a speed of 75 rpm.[i] If your pace is 9:00/mile or 80 rpm, check out the second playlist.[ii] Both playlists have enough music to take you through a 30-minute workout or a 5K at your expected pace.

During the next few weeks, we’ll release playlists of songs with higher BPM. In the meantime, I challenge those of you who run or cycle at the appropriate pace to try out this week’s playlists and let us know what you think!