Festival fitness: your summer cardio playlist

It’s always good to have a goal to focus on while you’re working out. Whether it’s a summer holiday, a wedding, a festival or just a special night out; your motivation will soar if your mind is channeled towards something positive.

Festival season is upon us, the time where we don our wellies and painstakingly pick our favourite outfits to get (inevitably) caked in mud. While it’s certainly not the most important part of your festival experience, you will probably want to look your best - if only to make yourself feel slightly more confident after three days cramped up in a tent. Wet wipes and dry shampoo are a saving grace, but they probably won’t make you feel like Britain’s Next Top Model, so it’d be great to have an extra confidence boost that you know won’t wipe off in the rain.

Improving your fitness pre-festival will not only provide you with some extra confidence while you’re partying, it will also improve your fitness levels so you can dance all night long! There’s nothing worse than tiring yourself out after a few songs, you want to have enough energy to jump all the way through your favourite band’s set - including the slow ones - and still carry on going. Regular exercise increases energy levels, meaning that you will feel less exhausted than if you didn’t exercise. Plus, it means that your body will be used to physical activity, so you’ll be prepared for an entire weekend of dancing!

While you want to get into great shape before your festival, you don’t want to end up injuring yourself. Stick to what you know and don’t try and get too technical just yet. Performing moderate intensity cardio at least three times a week will be enough to give your fitness a boost, while helping to ward away any pre-festival pounds. Try a 50-minute run on the treadmill, with a five-minute warm up and a 10-minute cool down. This will allow you to build your cardiovascular fitness levels, while burning calories, clearing your mind and releasing stress-reducing endorphins.

What better way to prepare yourself for your first festival of the season than by listening to a workout playlist packed full of the biggest tunes from the festival headliners? We have put together an epic hour-long playlist featuring songs from Glastonbury and V festival headliners Calvin Harris, Jungle, Chemical Brothers, Duke Dumont and Kasabian, as well as many others.

During the one-hour playlist you will be warmed up with 100 BPM songs, then move into steady 127 BPM tracks, before being slowed down back to 100 BPM. These tracks create the perfect musical background for some serious steady-state cardio.

Follow our playlist on Spotify for regularly updated workout playlists.

Far Nearer - Jamie xx
Time - Jungle
Chasing time - Azealia Banks
Underdog - Kasabian
Hey Boy Hey Girl - Chemical Brothers
Blame - Calvin Harris, John Newman
Over and Over - Hot Chip
Higher - Sigma, Labrinth
Need U 100% - Duke Dumont, A*M*E
Sticks ‘n’ Stones - Jamie T
Spectrum (say my name) - Florence + The Machine
If I Go - Ella Eyre
Everlong - Foo Fighters
Love Me Like You Do - Foo Fighters
Not Nineteen Forever - The Courteeners
Real Love - Clean Bandit

We hope this playlist motivates you to achieve your fitness goals in time to have a fantastic summer. Perhaps some of the tracks featured won’t be your cup of tea, so why not create your own festival playlist and share it with us on twitter? Simply share it with us and add the #FitnessEvolution hashtag.

Start your festival training at a Fitness First Club. As you can see here we have many locations all over the country, so let’s get the whole nation dancing!