Why I Lift Heavy to Bon Iver (And You Should Question Everything About Gym Music)

Picture this: You walk into a commercial gym, and the speakers are blasting the same recycled playlist of aggressive hip-hop and metal that's supposed to make everyone feel like they're about to bench press a freight train. Everyone's nodding along, completely bought into this idea that louder = stronger, harder = better.

I used to be that guy. Hell, I probably WAS that playlist.

But here's what nobody talks about in the fitness world—what if we've got it completely backwards? What if the music that actually makes you stronger isn't the music that makes you angry, but the music that makes you... present?

The Day Radiohead Made Me Deadlift Better

Three years ago, I was stuck. Not physically stuck—though my squat had been plateaued for months—but mentally stuck in this weird limbo between who I thought I should be as a lifter and who I actually was as a human being.

I'd been powerlifting for about five years at that point, following all the conventional wisdom. Blast Eminem before max attempts. Get angry at the bar. Channel your inner berserker. The whole testosterone-fueled ritual that everyone swears by.

And yeah, it worked... sort of. I was hitting decent numbers, but something felt off. Like I was constantly fighting against myself instead of working with myself.

Then one Tuesday morning—I remember it was Tuesday because the gym was weirdly empty—I forgot my usual playlist and ended up listening to whatever was on my phone. Which happened to be Radiohead's "In Rainbows."

I know what you're thinking. Radiohead? For deadlifts? Might as well swap out my lifting belt for a scarf and call it a day.

But something weird happened. Instead of psyching myself up into this aggressive frenzy, I found myself... settling in. The complex rhythms and Thom Yorke's haunting vocals created this bubble of focus I'd never experienced before. I wasn't fighting the weight—I was dancing with it.

That day I pulled a 20-pound PR, and it felt easier than lifts that were 50 pounds lighter.

The Science Nobody Talks About

Here's where it gets interesting, and where the fitness industry has been selling us short.

Most studies on music and performance focus on tempo, volume, and aggressive content. They measure heart rate, adrenaline, and immediate power output. Which is fine, but it's like studying a symphony by only measuring the decibel level—you're missing the entire point.

What these studies don't capture is the neurological shift that happens when you find music that resonates with your actual self, not your projected gym persona.

There's this concept in sports psychology called "flow state"—you know, that feeling when time slows down and everything just clicks. Athletes describe it as effortless effort, where the conscious mind steps back and lets the body do what it knows how to do.

Most gym music is designed to activate your sympathetic nervous system—fight or flight mode. Which has its place, don't get me wrong. But it's like driving with your foot on the gas and brake at the same time. You're creating tension when what you actually need is controlled relaxation.

The music that creates flow states? It's usually not what you'd expect.

My Musical Evolution (Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Weird Genres)

After that Radiohead revelation, I started experimenting. And by experimenting, I mean I went completely off the rails of acceptable gym music.

Phase 1: The Ambient Experiment

I started lifting to Brian Eno and Tim Hecker. Imagine explaining to your training partner that you're about to attempt a max squat to what sounds like robots meditating. But there was something about the texture of ambient music that helped me feel the subtleties of movement—the precise moment to initiate the lift, the exact groove of the bar path.

It was like lifting in slow motion, even though the actual lifts weren't slow at all.

Phase 2: The Jazz Deep Dive

Then I discovered what happens when you deadlift to John Coltrane. Jazz, especially the exploratory stuff, taught me something crucial about lifting—improvisation within structure.

Every lift has a technical framework, sure. But within that framework, there's this infinite room for personal expression. Some days your squat feels like a Bill Evans ballad—smooth, contemplative, perfectly measured. Other days it's more like Ornette Coleman—raw, powerful, slightly chaotic but somehow exactly right.

Jazz also taught me to listen. Not just to my body, but to the subtle conversation between me and the weight. When you're lifting to Kind of Blue, you can't muscle your way through a rep. You have to find the natural rhythm, the path of least resistance that's somehow also the path of most power.

Phase 3: The Indie-Folk Revelation

This is where it got really weird, even for me.

I started doing accessory work to Sufjan Stevens and Bon Iver. Try explaining that to a powerlifting coach. But here's the thing—these artists create these intricate sonic landscapes that demand your full attention. You can't half-listen to Bon Iver while scrolling Instagram. The music pulls you completely into the present moment.

And presence, it turns out, is the secret sauce of good lifting.

When you're fully present with a movement—really feeling every micro-adjustment, every slight shift in tension—you develop this intuitive understanding of your body that no amount of technical coaching can provide.

Why the Fitness Industry Gets It Wrong

The problem with most fitness music advice is that it treats music like a drug. Take this specific genre, at this specific volume, to produce this specific physiological response. It's reductive and misses the entire point of what music actually does to our consciousness.

Music isn't just sound waves that make your heart pump faster. It's a language that speaks directly to parts of your brain that exist way below conscious thought. It can shift your entire relationship to time, space, and physical sensation.

But the fitness world wants simple answers. "Play aggressive music to feel aggressive." "Use fast tempos to move fast." It's like saying you should only read instruction manuals because other types of books won't teach you anything practical.

I've trained with people who can't lift without their specific playlist, who get thrown off if the gym music changes. They've made themselves dependent on external stimulation instead of developing internal awareness.

That's not strength. That's a crutch dressed up as optimization.

What Actually Happens When You Match Music to Movement

When you find music that genuinely resonates with you—not what you think should resonate with you, but what actually does—something magical happens in your nervous system.

Instead of creating artificial tension, the right music helps you find what I call "relaxed power." It's the difference between forcing a door open and finding the key.

I remember the first time I cleaned and jerked to Sigur Rós. The Icelandic post-rock soundscapes created this sense of vastness that somehow translated into my body feeling more spacious, more capable of explosive movement. The lift felt less like a violent effort and more like a natural expression of stored potential.

Or lifting to classical music—Wagner during heavy squats is an experience I can't adequately describe. The music creates these emotional crescendos that perfectly mirror the intensity curve of a maximal lift. You ride the musical wave, and somehow the weight feels like part of the composition.

The Practical Side (Because You Probably Want to Try This)

Okay, so how do you actually implement this without looking like you've completely lost your mind?

Start Small

Don't jump straight from Eminem to Ólafur Arnalds for your next max attempt. Begin with accessory work or warm-ups. Use it as an opportunity to explore how different types of music affect your movement quality, not just your motivation level.

Pay Attention to Texture, Not Just Tempo

The sonic texture of music—how dense or spacious it sounds, how the different elements interact—has a huge impact on how your body interprets movement. Dense, compressed music (most commercial hip-hop and metal) tends to create muscular tension. More spacious, dynamic music tends to promote fluidity.

Match the Music to the Movement's Character

Heavy compounds lifts have this powerful, deliberate quality that actually pairs really well with music that has similar characteristics. Think classical, progressive rock, or cinematic scores. Explosive movements like Olympic lifts might benefit from music with sudden dynamic shifts—jazz fusion, certain electronic genres, even some punk.

Accessory work and conditioning? That's where you can get really experimental.

Use Music to Practice Different Mental States

This is the advanced stuff. Once you get comfortable lifting to non-traditional music, you can start using different genres to practice different approaches to the same movement.

Squat to ambient music and focus on perfect technique and internal awareness. Same weight, but switch to something with more energy and practice finding that same technical precision under higher arousal. You're basically training your nervous system to be more adaptable.

The Deeper Game

Here's what this is really about, though. It's not just about optimizing performance or finding some musical hack that adds 20 pounds to your total.

It's about reclaiming your training from the cultural expectations that tell you how you're supposed to approach physical challenge. The music is just the entry point into a much larger conversation about authenticity in athletics.

Most of us carry around this internal critic that's constantly judging whether we're doing things "right"—whether we look strong enough, aggressive enough, whatever enough. And that critic is just noise that interferes with the actual work of getting better.

When you give yourself permission to train to music that actually speaks to you, you're practicing a form of rebellion against those expectations. You're saying, "I'm going to figure out what actually works for me, regardless of what it looks like to other people."

And that attitude—that willingness to experiment, to be authentically yourself even when it's unconventional—that's what actually makes you better at everything, not just lifting.

Your Turn to Experiment

So here's my challenge to you: The next time you train, try something completely different musically. I don't care if it's medieval chants or Korean pop or experimental jazz. Pick something that genuinely interests you as music, not as background noise.

Pay attention to how it changes your relationship to the movement. Notice if you find yourself more present, more aware of subtleties you usually miss. See if you can find that sweet spot where the music enhances your focus without creating dependence.

And if someone gives you weird looks or asks why you're deadlifting to Debussy, just smile and tell them you're conducting an experiment in conscious lifting.

Because the truth is, the strongest people I know—the ones who keep getting better year after year—they're all experimenters at heart. They've figured out that there's no one-size-fits-all approach to human performance.

They've learned to trust their own experience over conventional wisdom.

And they lift to whatever the hell music makes them feel most like themselves.

What music makes you feel most like yourself? Because that might just be the secret to unlocking whatever you're really capable of.

What's the weirdest music you've ever trained to? Did it change anything about how you moved? Drop your experiments in the responses—I'm genuinely curious about what other people discover when they step outside the prescribed playlist.