Exercise, music, and technology
Exercise and music go hand in hand. There is nothing like the feeling of exercising, be it strength training, cardio or just walking, while listening to your favorite playlist of songs. An exercise routine can become either tedious or fun just by having or not having good music to listen to.
I love my ipod nano: it’s small, portable, can hold thousands of songs, has a pedometer and exercise log, and sounds great.There are tons of online websites dedicated to offering mixes, lists and suggestions on the “perfect” list of songs based on your running speed, exercise routine or favorite music genre. Here are some of these sites:
- http://www.runhundred.com/workout-music/ – users vote on their favorite songs and the results are tallied. Categories by genre, tempo, source and decade
- http://jog.fm/ – for running, walking or cycling music list based on your pace
- http://runningmusicmix.com/ – running songs categorized by genre and BPM
At the same time I have been using the app from Couch 2 5K at the suggestion of a friend of mine from West Palm Beach (hi Erika!) more than a year ago. It is basically a training program to get OFF from your couch and off and running a 5K in 9 weeks. Please visit their site: http://www.c25k.com/ Since then, family and friends in Puerto Rico and Florida have joined in and have had a great time doing it. The iphone or android app even post your results to facebook so that your friends can see your progress and join along or comment on your work, which I feel helps in motivating you to keep going and do your best.
There are even tracking apps like Run Keeper that save your routes using the GPS on your phone and log your time, distance and date to keep track of your progress.
It’s very exciting to see technology being used in new and interesting ways, especially for personal exercise and health applications. If you know of any new apps or websites out there relating to this subject please let me know!!
THINK LESS. DO MORE.
There is a frame in my bedroom with some positive/motivational words on it that goes something like: ‘Worry Less. Dream more. Work less. Play more.” and goes on with about 10 or so of those. I read them every day, and although they seemed ok at the beginning, they dont seem to help much as there are too many random “tips” and extremely vague overall. And sometimes vagueness is alright, as it helps to sell frames with vague expressions on them to a larger market, but I guess all it is really saying is just “live and enjoy your life without drowning in the bullshit”, which I guess is not as marketable a phrase 
So, in the end I decided to summarize it all to “Think less. Do more”, and there were great articles about it on the web too!, like this one: http://www.theemotionmachine.com/how-to-think-less-and-do-more-turning-life-into-flow
