Save a knee; use ellipticals

Recently, Pandora in an unholy partnership with Nike has been offering a mixer that gives you a station for workouts. You slide the little buttons for how much "endurance," "speed," and "power" you want in your workout. So I decided to give it a try and ended up with a station that plays mostly Led Zepplin. I slightly frowned.

Now, I'm not ragging on Led Zepplin. I realize I am somewhat of a minority when it comes to work out music, but I can only think of isolated occasions when I used loud, fast paced music to psych me up. As a teenager, when I as angry, I would often storm up to my room, play Norah Jones for the infinity-eth time and lay on the bed and close my eyes and try to relax. I don't enjoy being angry (it's a particularly uncomfortable emotion), and I felt there was no reason for me to prepetuate my bad mood with a more angry mix of music.

(Of course, there's nothing wrong with listening to angry music, in my opinion. The idea of catharsis has been around since antiquity - Aristotle discussed catharsis of why us humans love tragedies so much, despite the fact that they are, well, tragic. But for me, catharsis through music has never really worked for me.)

This works with exercise too. I know of many, many people who would rachet the volume on their mp3 player to 11 and listen to rock music while working out. I've never found that effective in motivating me; instead it irritates me. I don't particularly enjoy working out. I realize the effects benefit me and that I feel better when I'm done, but sweating and wheezing while running is not my idea of fun. So I need my Jack Johnson, reasonable level of course (I have sensitive ears; it's very sissy), so that I can transform the physical pain into some kind of zen tranquility.

Or, as someone once told me, I tend to construct playlists that resemble a montage scene for the part in a romantic comedy where the guy and girl (after an argument) realize they love each other but don't know what to do (also very sissy).