WASHINGTON (THE WASHINGTON POST) – Hours after reading about Taylor’s Swift’s intense training regimen for her concert tour, Kendal Owen was at her gym, singing on the treadmill, running through the Eras Tour set list.
Swift’s now-famous workout consists of belting her more than 40-song set while running and walking on a treadmill. It takes more than three hours to complete.
“It blew my mind,” Owen, 25, told The Washington Post from her home in Jacksonville, Florida, “The gym was my own version of Madison Square Garden.”
It didn’t matter to her that an older man on a treadmill next to her could hear her vocals. For as long as she could – roughly four miles – she ran and sang, and couldn’t help herself from performing some of Swift’s signature moves, especially for songs on the “Reputation album” set. It was a blast.
In the days and weeks since Swift gave the details of her preconcert training to Time Magazine, countless Swifties have tried to re-create it on their own. And then they have posted about it on social media, accruing millions of views and shares.
I tried it too, and it’s not for the faint of heart. I’m a runner and in pretty good shape – in October I ran the Chicago Marathon in 3 hours and 28 minutes – and yet I was winded after the first song. I did about 20 minutes and realised I was never, ever going to finish this workout.
But I also couldn’t help myself from jamming out, feeling somewhere between being embarrassed to be singing in my office gym, and getting caught up in the fervour of a Swift-fuelled runner’s high.
I, like the Swifties I interviewed, followed Swift’s rules: run for fast songs, jog or walk for slow songs.
“Every day I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud,” Swift told Time.
Some fans made it half a mile. Some did it in two parts. Many, like Owen, were inspired to run more when they saw their compatriots posting about it on TikTok and Instagram. She and others who spoke to The Post said it made working out fun in a way that is rare.
“I understood on another level how hard of a worker Taylor is from doing it,” said Marisa Vaillant, who fell in love with Swift when she went to her concert in April. Night three, Tampa, to be exact. “I can’t imagine doing that for 3-and-a-half hours. It connected me to the whole Swiftie community.”
Now Swifties love both football and running
Few cultural figures have had the ability to influence large swaths of America in recent memory like Swift has. When she started dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, suddenly her fans were learning about football and following the Chiefs. Many Swifties say they see themselves in the quirky 34-year-old. Now, some fans say, she’s helping make them a little bit healthier by inspiring them to get up and run – even if they never have before.
“When’s the Taylor marathon?” one user commented on a TikTok video with over a million views of someone attempting the workout.
True Swifties may note that the majority of the songs in the set list are not slow.
Some runners may think of this workout as a Fartlek, a Swedish word that translates to “speed play,” where a runner switches paces to work their muscles in varying ways. Add on talking and it gets harder. But those who tried the workout said that singing – or, let’s be real, belting – makes it only harder.
One expert said the fact that Swift is motivating people who might not otherwise run or exercise to get on a treadmill is a positive, but urged caution for fans eager to emulate the star.
“Anytime we can get people motivated to exercise, that’s a benefit,” said Laura Richardson, a clinical exercise physiologist at the University of Michigan’s School of Kinesiology. “But if you just run three hours, that’d equate to a marathon of run time. If your lungs and heart are not trained, that can lead to injury.”
Singing while running, Richardson said, works the lungs and heart in the same way running faster does. It causes runners to take in more oxygen, work their muscles at a higher intensity and tire more quickly. She recommends fans start slow with a 10- or 20-minute run, and eventually build up endurance.
The more someone runs and sings, she said, the easier the workout will get as their lungs increase their ability to turnover oxygen. – DAN ROSENZWEIG-ZIFF
