JogTunesIndie - All Independent Music, Running music, jogging music, playlists, and podcast for runners

Hints on Music-Paced Running

Here are some hints on running to the beat of our podcast offerings and other independent songs listed on jogTunesIndie.com. Feel free to email us with your ideas and suggestions.

First a warning! Music-paced running may be too strenuous for people with certain illnesses. Moderate to fast tempos may motivate you to run at unsafe paces for your health status and/or age. Please consult your physician if you have any medical concerns before running exactly to the beat of moderate and fast tempo songs.
It's wise to wear a pulse (heartrate) monitor when you work out to music from jogTunesIndie and the podcast. You'll find that working out to cadence-matched music will make your workout more intense. You may want to be sure you don't exceed your maximum rate. Check out some heartrate monitors at Polar Monitors.
While you're running to a tempo, you're essentially locked into a pace for the duration of the tune. If you want to change your pulse rate, you can increase or decrease your stride length. Also, you'll find that you can maintain your maximum pulse, no matter what the tempo is, by adjusting your stride length. A pulse monitor is obviously essential to do this effectively.
If you use a treadmill and/or elliptical, you'll enjoy matching the tempo of your songs. By changing the machine speed and/or elevation settings (if available) you can maintain your desired heartrate while keeping in step with the beat.
Running to tunes in the 80-90 BPM range requires that you double your pace. For example: if you're running to Hands Up by Black Eyed Peas (BPM=87), you'd run at twice the BPM or 174 BPM. Of course you can walk at the 80-90 BPM range during warm-ups and cool-downs. Most hip-hop songs are in this range. That's why they're great songs to run to.
Some tunes in our lists will start with a slow introduction. The runner may find this annoying. We at jogTunesIndie.com believe that this is a small price to pay for the fun of working out to music at your own speed. There just aren't enough perfect "runnable" tunes out there without slow intros.
Occasionally the definitive beat is hard to hear during portions of some tunes. This artistic variation can be a challenge for runners, but can also be fun. You can try to maintain the right pace and hope to be in time when the tempo resumes.
Jazz music is probably the most difficult to run to as the beat is more subtle. Jazz lovers, who find that they can easily tap their feet to the beat will have no problem with jazz tunes. Others may have to listen carefully for the beat or go to another genre.
To determine your personal workout pace, please click here to visit our sibling's pacetrack page at jogTunes.com.
Mac users can determine the beats-per-minute (BPM) of your favorite songs by downloading iTunes-BPM Inspector from Blacktree, Inc. If you open up the BPM column in iTunes (control-click any column name), you can click "Set" in the inspector and it will put the BPM that you have determined automatically into the BPM column of the highlighted song. All users can also calculate BPMs using the web-based converter at http://onlineconverters.com/bpm.html or http://legalize.org.il/asp/bpm.htm. There are other BPM calculators out there many of which are used by DJs.