I’ve always wanted to use this really out there almost unrecognizable Amanda Palmer number for a cool down and I finally got a chance. It did not disappoint! As long as you’re a fan of AFP.
Tag Archives: The Cool Down
Build a Workout Cool Down: Ennio Morricone – Farewell to Cheyenne
Ennio Morricone for a cool down. Seriously what more needs to be said?
Build a Workout Cool Down: Jeff Buckley – Corpus Christi Carol
Jeff Buckley’s “Corpus Christi Carol” works perfectly as a cool down with its quiet music and colossal falsetto vocal work by my favorite vocalist of all time. This is actually the first song by Jeff Buckley I ever heard. Seriously consider this one!
Build a Workout Cool Down: Nobuo Uematsu – Yakusoku no Chi
This beautiful choral piece off of the Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children soundtrack is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever heard. What a great way to cool down for the final three minutes of your run.
Build a Workout Cool Down: The Game – My Life Feat. Lil Wayne
For a cooldown I selected The Game’s “My Life”. Two reasons. The first is I’m a big fan of Lil Wayne’s autotuned singing (Sacrilegious I know). The second is that a good emotional story is a great way to end a run, encouraging you to finish out those last couple minutes by keeping your brain occupied.
Build a Workout Cool Down: The Offspring – Gone Away
I really wanted to use this song for a stride or burnout but it wasnt well paced enough for the former and not energetic enough for the latter. I think it works well as a cool down because it has that end of the movie feeling to it. There’s an element of exhaustion in the delivery that coincides well with those final walking minutes after a long run. If you still have breathe, feel free to sing along!
Build a Workout Cool Down: Alison Krauss – Down by the River to Pray
My mix had ended and my legs just weren’t ready to stop walking. They were really tensing up and cramping and I needed another couple minutes to walk it off. Thankfully I always pack some spares so I simply pulled out this wonderful acapella spiritual that I first heard on the O’Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack and walked off those extra couple minutes in peace. This song is the perfect way to cool down after a long and tiresome run.
Build a Workout Cool Down: Bill Withers – Ain’t No Sunshine
Wow. What a beautiful cool down! Bill Withers sexy voice and thumping guitar slowed me way down so that I could stretch out my sore muscles walking the last couple minute of my workout in perfect bliss.
Build a Workout Cool Down: …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – Invocation
And finally another new cool down in the form of “Invocation”.  I’m gonna be honest, you CANNOT go wrong placing this song as either an intro or an outro on ANY mixtape. The perfect subtle beauty of the piano works to either build tension towards the first powerful track on an album, or build towards a moment of rest as it does here at the end of the mix. Wonderful Wonderful music! For some reason the original version isnt up on youtube!! I had to settle for this cover which does a fairly good job of conveying the beauty of this song. Find the original if you can!
Build a Workout Cool Down: Ennio Morricone – Una Pistole Per Ringo
Ennio Morricone is a soundtrack king mostly because all of his songs make you feel like the coolest person on the planet. Even his slower music can be used on runs because a good cool down should always make you feel like the hero at the end of a movie.
Build a Workout Mix Cool Down: Alphaville – Forever Young
I guess it all depends on how you feel about the genre but 80’s pop ballads are almost guaranteed to work as cool downs! Something about their cheesy synth pop nature and addictive over the top choruses just really works to make you feel like you had a successful run. “Forever Young” is no exception and it was the perfect endcap to a great run.
Build a Workout Mix: Initial Mix
If you’re not sure what this is about, start by heading HERE and reading the introduction to this section of my blog.
I prepared a mix for my first run while performing this project. This one is actually very simple and also not very open to many musical genres or even artists for that matter. I went with this since it was a mix I used unofficially for about 6 months back when I was still running in New York. I think its a great jumping off point since it outlines the different types of running songs perfectly. In the coming weeks, I’ll be taking songs out of the mix and replacing them with others, commenting on any new additions and why they worked or didnt for me.
So, lets start with just a list of the mix itself, which you can also listen to HERE.
1. Marry the Night – Lady Gaga
2. Born This Way – Lady Gaga
3. Judas – Lady Gaga
4. Government Hooker – Lady Gaga
5. Americano – Lady Gaga
6. Scheise – Lady Gaga
7. Bloody Mary – Lady Gaga
8. We Are The Champions – Queen
So… Obviously if you dont like Lady Gaga you probably wont enjoy this mix very much. This is almost exactly the first 7 tracks off of Born This Way. It actually started out as just me listening to the album while running. The pacing on the album actually works great for a run. Heavy on bass beats if you know what I mean.
Marry the Night is and excellent Warm Up track. The first 30 seconds serves as and excellent walking point as you gear up to start running. My legs always tense up at the 37 second mark when the song starts glitching a bit and then I push off into a jog once the bass hits. The song has a perfect ebb and flow between verse and chorus where it kind of hangs back a bit in the verses and then builds faster and more forceful with each chorus and really gets your legs ready to run faster. Lady Gaga works very well because her music constantly adds little flourishes throughout the songs. This is important for running since the major weakness of a run is not becoming tired but becoming bored. Those extra moments keep you running. I constantly think, I just need to make it to that next little part!! My favorite one on this song happens at 3:37.
Born This Way is next and has a great beat for a Stride. The most important thing about a Stride is that the beat encourages you to keep with it in repeated steps. The underlying bass beat of the song keeps me going every time and a sing-song chorus always helps you in the mood to move. The “OOH there aint no other way, baby I was born this way” has such a happy bouncy feeling to it that I always find myself literally leaping with each step. Once again, Gaga adds little flairs throughout her songs so that you don’t feel like you’re listening to the same exact thing for 4 minutes.
On the album, Government Hooker comes next but I actually switch it with Judas so that I encourage myself to run a little farther without a break. For me, Judas is a Burnout song. Burnouts are always tricky because your emotional attachment to the song plays a big part in how much it gets your blood pumping. The epic feel of the opening already has me in its grasp and once the song reaches the 37 second mark and the beat drops, I couldnt stop my body from sprinting if I wanted to. A Burnout needs to make you FEEL powerful. It doesnt have to do this every moment as long as its sprinkled enough throughout the song to keep you going. For me, its the moment where Gaga sings “Bring em down down, and then sings a wordless ah ah section. Today my body was ready to give out halfway through the song. Then the bridge came on and I was back to sprinting. A good bridge can keep a Burnout going longer and this is very important since these are definitely the most tasking sections of the run. Most of the time, I would say to try to keep a Burnout under 3 minutes. Judas is an acception for me.
Ok now I’m ready for Government Hooker. I actually am not a huge fan of this song but I LOVE the beat for a Stride. It has this constant bouncing beat with these little digital noises that keep you going and going. One thing about Strides is that they arent necessarily songs where you are guaranteed to be running fast. As long as they keep you at a specific pace, whether that be 3mph or 6, then they are doing their job. After Judas I really needed to slow down so I was thankful for this respite.
Americano is another great Warm Up and works very well in the center of a run to bring you back after a moment of rest. It starts off slow enough with some great acoustic guitar. Then you get all these “La-la-la” bits with the hand clapping that start to speed you up and once you here that gun get cocked, you’re ready to burst into a sprint. The song does a great job of slowly building on itself to get your body moving faster and faster.
I used Scheise next as a Stride and while it does its job, I mostly used it because the song was always next on the album. I think I’d really like to replace this first for a better song.
If I haven’t beaten the point home yet (no pun intended), the beat is the most important part of a good Stride. You want it to have the right amount of push in it to keep you going. You also want it to have enough variety that you dont get bored. Too much variety and it looses its ability to keep you going at a steady pace. Bloody Mary is a perfect example of a Stride done right.  The beat that drops at the 19 second mark has just the right amount of depth to put my foot down with conviction on every pace and the chorus keeps the stride steady while also changing things up and pushing you forward to the next time that deep Nine Inch Nails beat comes back in.
Cool downs are where you get to have the most fun. I decided to go with the obvious choice of We Are The Champions. You want something that has lots of lyrics so you can sing-along or at least get your mind engaged in the songs meaning. It also helps if you pick something that feels like a reward for all your hard effort. Obviously this song passes with flying colors!
That’s it for my first workout mix. I haven’t quite figured out exactly how I’m going to introduce new songs into the mix. For the moment, I simply copied over all the songs into their own posts to categorize them. I’m also creating a list HERE with links to playlists that will contain any new songs I add to each type of song and as the lists grow, you will be able to pick through them for your own mixes. This is all new to me so if you read this and have any types of requests, questions or suggestions, please feel free to let me know here in the comments. If you like what I’m doing, please leave words of encouragement or like the posts. It goes a long way towards me continuing to do this.
Build a Workout Cooldown: Queen – We Are The Champions
Cool downs are where you get to have the most fun. I decided to go with the obvious choice of We Are The Champions. You want something that has lots of lyrics so you can sing-along or at least get your mind engaged in the songs meaning. It also helps if you pick something that feels like a reward for all your hard effort. Obviously this song passes with flying colors!
Intro to Build a Workout Mix
The idea for the “Build a Workout” concept came from a couple different places and I thought it would be helpful to elaborate on it here first.
One of the requests I get most often from people is to create workout mixes for them. I’m not really a weight lifter and so while I will be calling this a workout mix, what I really mean is a runners mix. My problem with attempting this for others is that motivational music is relative. Yes there are some songs that may be universal but while Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” might be the perfect workout inspiration for one person, Metallica’s “Master of Puppets may be equally inspiring to someone else. This makes it virtually impossible for me to create a mix unless I construct them person by person based on their personality. Even then, it may be a certain instrument that motivates an individual such as the power and beat of the drums or the technical nature of the guitar solo. Further complicating this is running style. One person may do mostly walking interlaced with brief power sprints for thirty minutes while another may go for a 10 miles endurance run.
With that in mind, I decided it would be best if I could find a way to share the tools for people to create their own mixes and include my personal input. Build a Workout Mix is designed around this idea. I will break down inspring songs into one of 4 categories I will describe below and then anyone can pick and choose their own personal styles and time adjustments to create something that works for them!
The other reason I decided to start this project is that my gut growth shows no signs of stopping. Working all the time in Michigan does not provide much opportunity for exercise. The last thing I want to do at the end of a long day is go for a run. My hope is that combining my passion for music (Something I love) with exercise (Something I don’t) will help cultivate an environment that will encourage me to maintain a healthy lifestyle and share my passion at the same time.
So… How will it work? For starters, I will be posting an initial playlist. I’ll start with a half hour run.  I will try to discuss my experience listening to the mix on my run, documenting why it does or doesn’t work for me in a free form fashion. Then, over the coming weeks(months, years?) I will tweak and adjust it, pulling out what works and adding it to a permanent Ranked category for anyone to starting building their own mixes. While I plan to have an ever changing mix, I will also try to upload some permanent mixes that I feel comfortable with for specific situations.
I highly encourage participation in the form of song suggestions and your own mix variations!
The categories will be divided as follows:
The Warm Up – The warm up is exactly what it sounds like. The song is designed to start your run and usually focuses on some type of build starting slow and increasing in intensity to build up your mind for the task ahead. A warm up may also be used in a segmented run in which there are multiple points of origin over an extended period of time. Variety in this category will usually focuses on the speed of the build up and the overall final intensity at the end of the song.
The Stride – The Stride focuses on keeping you going. Think of it as a cruise control. It is simply designed to keep you going at a relatively steady pace. These’s songs tend to have the longest length since you typically want to stay at a healthy pace for most of your workout. Variety will come in the speed of a rhythm. Some songs may keep you comfortably at 4 mph while others may encourage you to stay at 7 mph.
The Burnout – My personal favorite, burnouts are designed to produce adrenaline. You know that moment where you’re about to give up because your body cant take another second of running? A burnout is meant to push you that extra mile! A song so intense you just cant afford to slow down when you hear it! Variety here will usually focus on length. Do you need a last minute burst or 4 minutes of encouragement?
The Cool Down – The cool down gives you the most freedom of choice in song genre. This is meant usually after a burnout and is in place specifically to keep you going just a little bit farther at a relaxed pace. As long as the song keeps you calm and focused, it can really come from anywhere. These can also be placed in the middle of a run that includes sprints and breaks.
The Monster –Â The monster is a newer category that focuses specifically on songs of a longer length. These songs, with a loose rule being over 6 minutes in length, tend to stretch the bounds of a single definition. They are long enough that they may contain warm ups, strides, burnouts, and cool downs, at various times during the song. These songs are usually used for ultimate motivation.
doctorizmusicremedies 