Music has the power to trigger strong emotional responses and can alter mood and relieve stress. It has physical effects on the body, improving pain tolerance, influencing heart and breathing rates, setting the pace for tasks, like lifting weights repeatedly.
Now there is a complete scientific field behind music therapy, feel free to discover, however at the moment I only thought about sharing my choices of music for various goals. 🙂
Focus (office work)
I was going with trance usually, but lately I realized that it doesn't work well with caffeine, the two together is just too much. I still listen to that type as I like the album series of In search of sunrise by Tiesto, but what works best is "lofi hip hop" by the youtube channels Lofi Girl, Chillhop Music and STEEZYASFUCK (unbeatable naming there). The kids like the animations of these, it's also calming to watch those.
Sometimes I get myself listening to classical music, that works too.
Silence also works, when my music is interrupted it happens that I wear my noise cancelling headphones, while nothing plays for an hour or two; a friend of mine has recommended to work in silence and I do while writing this article at night, but with the kids around or in an open office environment silence is not something that can happen. 🙃
Bonus: when you are done for the week, Friday by Timmy Trumpet helps to adjust to the weekend, if you don't mind the language. 😎
Workout
Nowadays I do 4 sessions a week and I reached the habit level where I don't need to force myself to gym, instead I feel the urge that I need to go, so I don't really need extra motivation to go there, however with a calorie deficit and fasting the workout is harder to complete due to lower energy levels.
It's one thing to use lighter weights, but if you usually did sets of 10 reps without an issue, now you will feel it much harder upon the 8. repetition, you will start to think that today this is all you got and now you are on the road of quitting; that's when music (and/or caffeine 😁) can help you out, to push through that 9. and 10. repetition, so you will feel like you accomplished what you used to, it's a win!
In the last few months I'm listening to this one during workout:
On the way to the gym I listen to my recent favorites to disconnect from whatever I was doing before it:
- We've lost dancing
- BLR - Taj, Comfort me, Méduse (this one has some insane bass with in-ear headphones, I use it for some heavy lifts too)
Honorable mentions:
- Rob Bailey - Beast - for PR-s (as in personal records), reminds me of Eddie "The Beast" Hall, world's strongest man 2017
- Metallica - Black album - for home workout, I tried multiple of the oldies, but I found most of them just too slow, this one with a few songs skipped worked out OK
What do you listen to?
Push yourself with the power of music