It knocks the hell out out "cock rock" at all times including working out....the odd bit of Doors, or Ozzy now and then was about all I could cope with.

My gym played 103.5 Classic Rock out of Chicago until they closed down...I wonder if there was a correlation.

Actually, I like electronica and some techno. At the gym I used to go to, they used to play a lot of R&B and soul from teh late 70s/early 80s. The new gym I go to has TVs with cable attached to all the cardio machines and I find watching TV to be even better for my workout because if soothing interesting is on TV, it will keep me from getting bored and therefore I will work out longer.

But really, in today's world of portable music and mp3 players with 30 and even 100GB memories, just bring your iPOd if you don't like teh gym's music.

I gave up going to the local "Y" after finding I could not get on the walking/running machines... they were always reserved for some class or another. So, I started race walking on my own. While at the Y they had a local station on and I was always wishing they had just had silence on since it was a distraction from what I had on my mp3 player. Currently, for my 10 miles of walking I have a player loaded with a bunch of singles as well as a couple of techno mixes from Podrunner at DJsteve.com. Sometimes the pounding of techno drives me and sometimes I'm really put off by it but when I'm in the mood for it, Podrunner does the trick and it's free. (No, I don't work for the site!)

Being a moble DJ, music is important to me. So, my work out mix has a lot of variety. Some that work for me are tunes by Tina Turner (Simply the Best), Devo (Pop Music), Fergie, Hoku (Perfect Day), Hobostank (The Reason), Madonna (Vogue, Rain), Natasha Bedingfield, (unwritten is a perfect pace!), Proclaimers (500 Miles),Ram Jam (Black Betty), The New Loud (Secrets) - Milwaukee band, Vanilla Ice (Ice Ice - naturally), Gnarls Barkly, Eminem, (With out me), Evanesance (Anything!) and a bit of Aerosmith (Walk this way). Not bad for a guy in his mid 40's, hey?

I think you have to find what drives you along and sets a relatable beat or had somet meaning to it. Songs that affirm seem to be helpful. I also rotate what is on my playlist quite often so that I don't get bored. But, some are standards that are always there, including a couple to get me over the 'wall' that I think everyone hits in exercise.

Exercise and be well!

If I could hazard a guess, the reason why so much of the music played in gyms is so bad is because it is selected long beforehand in corporate boardrooms.

My guess is that your gym contracted with some kind of audio "content provider" company to pipe in a selection of music, and that company has several contracts with record companies to play certain songs.

Those songs are not likely to be the best songs available. On the contrary, it is much more likely that they are the cheapest songs that the content provider could get away with contracting for while fulfilling the terms of its contract with your gym.

You might think of it as "the best of the worst", with maybe one or two genuinely popular songs thrown in to make the rest endurable.

The world would be a better place if gyms played Coconut Monkeyrocket.

Also:

-- Messer Chups

-- The Atlantics (and other surf guitar bands, Dick Dale, etc.)

-- Yello ("Pumping Velvet," etc.)

-- Aphex Twin ("Digeridoo," many others)

-- The "Run Lola Run" soundtrack

-- Royksopp ("Alpha Male," others)

-- Front 242 ("Skin")

-- KMFDM

-- Tenpole Tudor ("Swords of a Thousand Men")

-- Orbital ("Lush," "The Box," etc.)

-- Jean-Jacques Perrey

-- Nortec Collective

-- The Avalanches

-- Can

-- Bill Laswell

-- Chemical Brothers

-- Ulrich Schnauss

-- Modeselektor ("Vote or Die")

-- Amon Tobin

-- The Aquabats

-- Madness / + any other good ska

-- Screaming Blue Messiahs ("Smash the Marketplace")

-- Shriekback ("Nemesis," etc.)

-- Flaming Lips ("Pompei Gottendammerung")

-- Kraftwerk ("Tour De France")

-- James Brown

-- George Clinton / Parliament

-- Frankie Smith ("Double Dutch Bus")

-- David Bowie / Iggy Pop / Roxy Music / and friends

-- anything on MOTOWN Records

-- any good old ATLANTIC R&B

-- 1940s swing from Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and friends

-- Xavier Cugat

-- The Bran Flakes

-- Tipsy

-- Ursula 1000

-- Martinibomb

-- Montefiori Cocktail

-- Plastic Bertrand ("Ca Plane Pour Moi")

-- Yes ("Roundabout," anything with a semi-consistent beat)

-- Talking Heads

-- Devo ("Beautiful World," "We Like Explosives," etc. NOT "Whip It")

-- Thompson Twins ("Love Lies Fierce" and other remixes)

-- The The

-- Public Image Limited

-- Barenaked Ladies

-- They Might Be Giants

-- Adam Ant / Bow Wow Wow

-- Siouxsie / Cocteau Twins / Cure / March Violets

-- Curve / Laika / Seefeel / The KLF / Saint Etienne

-- Grandaddy / Postal Service / Radiohead / Blur / Pulp

-- The Killers / Hot Hot Heat / Yeah Yeah Yeahs

-- The Go! Team

-- Any new-music offerings in the int'l ROUGH GUIDE series

-- 808 State / Eon / Prodigy / Moby / FSOL / Messiah

-- Yellow Magic Orchestra

-- "Night on Disco Mountain" / other good disco

-- the soundtrack to the Katamari Damacy video game

-- Fela Kuti

-- Japanese Pop: Halcali, Puffy, 5-6-7-8's, Pizzicato 5, etc.

-- Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys

-- Bollywood: from Asha Bhosle to "Bride & Prejudice"

-- Gary Numan / Ultravox / Nina Hagen / Propaganda

-- The Art of Noise

-- Kool & the Gang / Sly & the Family Stone / Stevie Wonder

-- Giorgio Moroder / Jean-Michel Jarre / Tangerine Dream

.....but most of all: COCONUT MONKEYROCKET

I don't know about other gyms, but at my gym crappy techno would be a mercy. At least it provides a baseline of minimally acceptable noise at an acceptable volume.

The mornings at my gym usually play out something like this:

0600: The grown ups all show up, and whoever gets to the stereo first puts on either NPR or classic rock at a reasonable volume.

0700: The second shift shows up, and this includes a large number of male wannabe corporate ninjas in their mid-20s who just walk over to the stereo in reception without so much as a by-your-leave and switch it to some station that plays what purports to be rock music these days, at TOP FREAKING VOLUME.

0701: Someone who is fully past puberty will turn the volume back down.

0702: The lunkheads turn the volume back up and holler obscenities because "woo, dude, I am pumped" or something. I'm not sure they actually have a reason.

0704: Nancy, a college librarian and grandmother of six who is one of the early shift regulars, rips the power cord out of the stereo and threatens to strangle the junior partners with it if they assault her eardrums one more time.

0706: Violence ensues, the frightened staff baricade themselves in the trainer's office.

0710: Total breakdown of society. Cats and dogs living together.

0720: Shower.

The crappy techno would be nice. It'd save on hurt feelings, sore eardrums and broken bones.