Playlists for Life: Lifting

Playlists for Life is a narrative playlist venture from Third Bridge Creative. Each month, a member of our team curates a soundtrack to a pivotal moment in their life, and writes about the circumstances and discovery methods that led them to these particular sounds. You can listen to last month’s playlist here.

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For the better part of a decade, I tried to convince myself I enjoyed running. The wind in my hair! The satisfaction of doing something difficult! The meditative loneliness of miles on the road with only your footsteps as company! But whatever joys I derived from pounding the pavement faded entirely after I tweaked a hip adductor and had to take a long break from physical activity. When I returned, I felt burned out and sore, confronting for the first time the inherent monotony of running for miles every day.

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I’d lifted weights occasionally in my early 20s, but returned to them with consistency and dedication a couple of years ago to fill the void that hours of cardio had once taken up in my schedule. I’ve stuck with it because—comparatively—it’s pretty easy as a form of exercise. Lifting is intermittent work: it’s 30 seconds at a time of doing something extremely difficult, followed immediately by a couple minutes of scrolling on your phone. It’s a dream for a lazy guy; I get all the endorphins of working hard while most of my time at the gym is spent sitting down.

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As a result, I’ve often told people that I’m happy to listen to basically anything while I’m lifting. I’m good with saccharine pop music, movie podcasts, or even whatever gurgly post-grunge is playing over the speakers at my gym at 7 AM. Most of my time is idle, so I don’t really have a functional need for anything specific. It’s very often become a space to catch up on listening to an artist I need to tackle for research purposes—or sometimes, I won’t listen to anything, and zone out to everyone else’s breathy efforts and clanking weights. 

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Still, sometimes, I need a little extra push. That’s what this playlist is for. Dreary death metal, blackened screamo, punishing noise rock, and cochlea-busting rap mutations—these are the sounds I reach for when the 200mg of caffeine in my energy drink hasn’t hit yet, and I need a little more oomph to get the barbell back to the rack. Heavy music and heavy weights are a classic combo for a reason.