Amp Up Your Workout With Hard Dance Music!

By next festival season, if your goal is to be able to rip off your shirt in the middle of the crowd to reveal a conditioned six-pack or if your goal is to be able to fit into a cute little midriff, then getting the most out of your work-out is vital! For a Hard Dance fan, going into a work-out without a fine selection of music is literally worse than walking into the desert without water – it’s just shit!

To get the most out of your work-out, it’s essential to set the tone and seek out the right music to correspond to your given activity, otherwise what could have been a fun and invigorating work-out may turn into a half-arsed effort. Hard music loving gym junkies, have no fear! Over the years, I’ve dedicated myself to exercising regularly and partaking in a range of different kinds of exercise and I’ve reviewed what kinds of music tend to work best for me and hopefully for our readers too!

Warm-ups – Classic Hardstyle & Hard Trance

There’s not really much to warming up, other than convincing yourself that this work-out will be entirely worth all of the blood, sweat and tears and the hour of treacherous pain you’re about to embark on will benefit you and make you feel better about that chocolate cake you ate last night. Therefore, you need something steady and catchy to get you in the mood and this is why I highly recommend chucking on some classic hardstyle or hard trance before working out. Hard Trance is great because it’s not too hard, but it’s fast and hard enough to get your body in the mood to move! Depending on what your workout is, you can even continue listening to your warm-up tunes due to the wide selection of differing tracks. For a warm-up, anything will do, as long as it fulfils its aim to get your body moving!

Strength Exercises (without weights) – Euphoric Hardstyle & Tek

Whether you’re powering through gruelling abs-exercises, lunges, squats or push-ups, building strength during your workouts is very important; muscle burns more than fat and having looking tight and refined is fucking hot. One extremely important factor to remember when doing strength exercises is that you need to keep your core stable and focus on doing these exercises steadily and correctly, which is why we recommend euphoric Hardstyle! Tek is also appropriate for strength workouts because it’s entertaining, melodic and not too intense. These two styles will take your strength workout to the next level!

Weight Training – Raw Hardstyle

Lifting weights can pose many benefits for your health, including boosting your bone mineral density and decreases risk of arthritis, helping with cognitive function, increasing metabolism and it also lowers your risk of cardiovascular disease! Men are often spotted in the gym lifting weights, however for women it’s also extremely healthy to do so and I promise that you won’t look like a butch guy if you lift weights – weights actually help women achieve that toned and refined look. With an intense workout, intense music is required, which is why raw hardstyle can transform a boring weights session into an exciting and rewarding session! Raw hardstyle offers that beloved surge of aggression which blends perfectly with some aggressive weight lifting!

Long Distance Running – UK Hardcore, Freestyle, Raw Hardstyle

Seeing as I run 8-9 kilometres four times per week (yeah, I’m a unit), I think it’s safe to say that long distance running is something I’m very familiar with. The best thing about going for a run is that it it’s invigorating, it kick-starts your body and brain and also releases a lot of stress! For those ever-irate cunts like me, running is a great way to keep your feistiness under control and calm yourself before beginning your day.
Besides Drum N’ Bass, I love listening to UK Hardcore, Freestyle and Raw Hardstyle whilst running – these three styles are exciting, energising and also dramatic. The drops in Raw Hardstyle are always HUGE and with the crossover raw/melodic tracks, the emotional appeal is great, especially for the last few minutes of your run. Freestyle is great because it offers a lot of variety and right in the middle of your run and when you need the most motivation, “BAM!” a hardcore track drops! UK Hardcore is also great because it’s steady and fun to listen to.

HIIT – Hardcore & Raw Hardstyle

High-intensity interval training, or abbreviated as HIIT can be described as an exercise routine that utilises short periods of intense, anaerobic exercise followed by less-intense recovery periods. For example, doing bursts of sprints followed by short breaks is categorised as HIIT and with this kind of challenging exercise some serious reinforcements are needed! Got a heavy HIIT ahead of you? No worries, chuck on a bit of Hardcore and everything will be A-Okay!
With Hardcore’s high BPM and energising approach, it can boost your workout in ways you’d never imagine! If you’re not a fan of Hardcore, I recommend you put on some Raw Hardstyle of your choice, but I find that energetic tracks work the best, not tracks that have overwhelming, dis-jointed kicks.

Pilates – Subground

For those who like to enjoy a relaxed work-out every once in a while or something for after cardio, Pilates is perfect to strengthen your core and work muscles that other exercises don’t work. Unlike Yoga, which is a connection between the mind, body and soul, Pilates is a little more challenging and is likely to leave you quite sore the next day. If you don’t feel like listening to the boring Pilates music on your DVD then subground is the most ‘peaceful’ kind of hard dance music so I guess these two go hand in hand!

Boxing – All corners of Hardcore!

For those who get easily bored during workouts, I recommend that you try boxing! It’s great for cardiovascular health, good for anger management and also packs in a great muscle workout too! Boxing (especially in group classes) can be a really motivating workout as it does work on the basis of being angry and punching and kicking stuff, what better way to amp-up your workout than with the aggressiveness of Hardcore?! Anything from early hardcore to mainstream and even the harder stuff such as up-tempo, industrial or hardcore drum n’ bass can get you going and transform an average effort into your best effort!

Cycling – Hardcore & UK Hardcore

The thing about cycling is that you are in complete control and it’s easier than you think to start lagging during the workout which is why lower tempo’s aren’t the best if your mission is to cycle your ass off (literally). For the ‘harder’ folks out there, Hardcore is the go-to for a gruelling cycling sesh or a spin-class but UK or Happy Hardcore are just as great! UK Hardcore or Happy Hardcore can work a treat during a cycling work-out and surprisingly enough, some spin-classes I’ve been in have thrown in a few cheeky tracks to spice up the class! The energy UK Hardcore brings is great and it keeps your attention the whole time, making it harder to realise your burning muscles.

We hope that our ‘manual’ has helped some of you next time you are about to start your workout and you aren’t sure what you should listen to! Agree with our selections? Let us know some of your favourite workout tunes in the comments below! Happy shredding people!