Sweat Bands: The '80s Gym Rock Challenge

This Pulse Massager Mini uses tiny electrical impulses, as we’ve explained before, to zap away tension and pain in your muscles. But how did those muscles get so sore in the first place?

With our '80s Gym Rock Challenge, that’s how! It’s not only “Far From Over”, it’s just getting started. Take it away, Frank Stallone:

It’s the ultimate test of physical and musical endurance. Which medal will you claim in triumph?

Gold: run, bike, or do something equally intense for all ten songs.
Silver: walk for all ten songs.
Bronze: listen to all ten songs in one sitting.

The seminal gym-rock classic is, of course, “Physical”. While it may lack the steroidal guitar blaze that would come to define the genre, it does have lots of Olivia Newton-John tormenting men of certain ample proportions:

It would take Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” to inject some testosterone into the form. Future practitioners would imitate Dave Bickler’s “lifting something heavy” vocal strain along with quintessential rhymes like survive/alive and fight/night:

And, of course, Flashdance defined the look. Jennifer Beals and/or her stand-in sweats all over the steel-mill spotlights in the video for Michael Semebello’s “Maniac”, a song originally written not for the movie but for a Sembello album in 1982 which the film’s producers heard and liked:

Feeling the burn yet? Let the grunting Joe “Bean” Esposito remind you to “never doubt that you’re the one and you can have your dreams” - because “You’re The Best” around:

It’s getting harder. But as someone named Robert Tepper reminds us, just as when a palooka from Philly faced off against the most lethal fists the Soviet boxing machine ever produced, there’s “No Easy Way Out”:

Don’t give up! You can do this! You never quit on anything in your life and you’re not gonna quit now! Do what John Farnham would do and “Break the Ice”:

Ease off a little now and gather your strength to kick hard to the finish line - but don’t stop moving. Be a “Man in Motion” like John Parr. “Play the game,” he counsels. “You know you can’t quit until it’s won”:

“Your body’s ready! Your heart’s on fire! Gonna push it over the wire!” Stan Bush and his fistful of synthesizers know what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna “Fight to Survive”:

Almost there! If you can take Paul Engemann’s advice and “Push It To The Limit”, a mansion full of cocaine will be yours:

You did it! You drove your body, your heart, your ears through some of the most triumphantly corny music ever made! You won the final fight with the will to survive! Now scream into the night to tell the world you’re alive!

And put this Pulse Massager Mini on your tired, aching muscles. But not on your ears. They’ll have to heal on their own.

Our other weekend playlists aren’t all this challenging:

• Grazing in the Grass: A Picnic Playlist
• Turn On Country Style: Psychedelic Country Nuggets
• Library Music: Overdue for Recognition
• Beyond the Legend: Bob Marley Deep Cuts
• Songs to Scrub By: Our Shower Playlist
• Gated Reverb: Boom and Bust
• 808 101: The Drum Machine That Moved The '80s