Turn up, throw down!
By now you may have seen, or heard about The WOD Mix… So what’s it all about?
When I first started CrossFit I fell in love with the intensity and atmosphere and coming from a background in mixing and producing music, my inquisitive nature lead me to start thinking how could I apply my musical knowledge to make this experience even better; how could I get more out of an athlete by using music?
I spent the next 12 months designing prototypes of various styles, editing thousands of tracks, removing sections and breakdowns so that the intensity would remain high throughout the whole mix, this had a huge effect on keeping athletes moving. This was in a similar fashion to playing music from a stage or DJ booth, if the music stopped, everyone stopped dancing… If the music stops mid-workout, athletes stop moving. Moral of the story, never let the music stop and ensure that the intensity of the music matches the type of workout.
If it’s a strongman strength workout, old school Rap works well due to it’s aggressiveness, but if you have a 12 minute AMRAP, you want something high octane like Drum’n’Bass, constantly changing chords to trick the mind into giving more cognitive out; making you move more. It’s very much like dancing, we can sync the rhythm of the music to the pacing of the movement and this can have a huge effect on your result.
Constantly varied movements, require constantly varied, motivational music.
When I began designing the timed mixes, the EMOM’s and Tabatas, my English accent just didn’t give the effect I was looking for, so I teamed up with The CrossFit Games Mc Josh Gallegos to replicate what they did at the Games. The result was much better and had the desired effect on 3, 2, 1, go!
We’re now 30 episodes deep and the feedback has been brilliant from around the world, my personal favourite is probably Fight Gone Bad due to the 500 effects it has in and the details in the short rest periods. The Power Ballad mix also stands out because it has never really been done before, not mixed properly, that always gets people fired up during Lifting classes.
There’s a a lot planned for the next year, more timed mixes, a range of apparel, different genres and constantly trying to evolve from where the project began. The WOD Mix is available to stream or download directly from thewodmix.com or alternatively on iTunes and Mixcloud. If you have any suggestions or requests, fire them over, I’m always open to new ideas. Welcome to The WOD Mix – Turn up, throw down!
