There are many sports where you can easily listen to music while you train, but swimming isn't one of them. Sure, you can buy yourself a waterproof MP3 player, but as swim coach Robby Lambert said in Lynn Sherr's excellent book,
Swim: Why We Love the Water, "When you swim, you're taking away one of your senses, your hearing...So it leaves you the peace of your mind, the cadence of your swim."
That being said, music is a huge motivator before I swim. I have a playlist of psych up music called swimming songs on my iphone. (I also have a playlist called yoga warm-up which is much mellower for before sunrise yoga at 6:30 am, and walking songs which is mainly cheery songs of moderate pace for my walks to and from work).
My musical preferences tend toward the indie, garage, alt-country and post-punk genres. So if you don't like noise, these probably won't be for you. But for those who do, I figured I'd share three songs that help me get pumped up to swim.
(We Are) Augustines-Chapel Song
This track has such a great driving beat, and it is the perfect pace to have in my head when I'm heading out into open water
. It's from the band's first album, Rise Ye Sunken Ships--so maybe the
connection to the open water was intentional.
The Features--Blow it Out
I've found that this is a great song to listen to pre-swim on the mornings where it's tough to get out of bed, or it's cold outside. It's just so darn infectious. Because "if you're happy and you know it/turn the volume up/and blow it out!"
Weekend-Mirror
This is the newest of the tracks in my psych-up rotation, because I just discovered Weekend's record, Jinx last month. But it's been in constant rotation since I downloaded it. This song has a great driving beat, and a mix of edgy noise and harmonics that I'm a sucker for, and the refrain "I feel sick, sick, sick, sick/In my heeaaarrrrtt" is another good one for pacing.
Do you have favorite psych up music for your workouts?
Email me or
tweet me with the hashtag #swimsongs.
