Bond. Play Bond.

At the 8:00, 90 minute Saturday morning Spin Cycling class this past weekend, I was totally revved up. Carol, the instructor for that class, is a total cycling maniac, and it's so exhilarating! She does things just a tiny bit differently (as all instructors do). Her method revolves around tebatas, hammers, rolling hills, mountains, and more hammers. Hammers? Yeah, hammers. This is the main thing she focuses on. Hammers are going all out, as hard as you can possibly go. She always says "we're going to get hammered, blackout and remember the whole thing." A blackout in the spin-cycling world is where you're going so fast RPM wise, that the screen blacks out. On the bikes found in that class, you get to over 140 RPM and the screen blacks out. It gets intense! 

Anyway, let's go ahead and address the title of this post. The paragraph about the morning spin class is relevant, I promise. If you're looking for some new, non-lyrics music to add to your workout, spin class, or anything else, go and check out the band, Bond. It's an electric string quartet that has some great pump-up pop-esque tracks. Carol played a few tracks from Bond while we were on some super climbs with on/off hammers. These tunes definitely got us through the battle!

My favorites are Pump It and Victory 10. Go take a look and have a listen, and be sure to let me know what you think! 1...2...3...Go! Sweat Happy!

Spin Those Wheels & Records

I'm addicted to Spin Cycling classes. The intense cardio, the booming music, the crazy energy of the instructors, the great feeling in the room, it's all so great. Doing it by myself is practically torture. There's no one there, you have to remember you own counts, time yourself and try to come up with music to ride to. I try to avoid spinning alone at all costs. Yes, I'll even wake up on Saturday mornings and go to the 90 minute class at, wait for it, seven in the morning. 

We'll talk about spin workouts later on, but here's a list of songs that are great for spinning. Notice how I didn't say this is a playlist? Exactly. It's not a playlist. Just a list of songs in no particular order that are great to ride to, different pulses are included, but it's certainly not in an order. You can do that yourself. These are just some songs we ride to in the classes I go to that really seem to get the energy going.

Yes, I'm a jazz musician, I obviously love jazz music. I absolutely cannot workout to jazz, it just doesn't work for me. I end up concentrating on the jazz stuff and run the risk of using bad and incorrect form, making the risk for injury skyrocket. That's bad! I need an obnoxious, dance, pop, hip-hop pulse going. As you'll see. 

• Tongue Tied - Grouplove
• We Run the Night - Havana Brown
• Blurred Lines - Robin Thicke
• Sex on Fire - Kings of Leon
• Some Nights - Fun.
• We Are Young - Fun.
• People Like Us - Kelly Clarkson
• Mercy - Duffy
• Basket Case - Green Day
• All I Do Is Win - D. J. Khaled 
• Remember the Name - Fort Minor
• Sexyback - Justin Timberlake
• Glad You Came - The Wanted
• Moves Like Jagger - Maroon 5
• Brokenhearted - Karmin
• Space Cowboy - NSYNC
• Part of Me - Katy Perry
• Die Young - Ke$ha
• Give 'Em Hell Kid - My Chemical Romance
• We R Who We R - Ke$ha
• Smooth - Santana

There are so many other great songs with a pulse conducive to cardio workouts (like spinning!) out there. I know I've missed a ton of them! Let me know in the comments what your favorite cardio songs are. 

1...2...3...Go! Sweat Happy!