For a pop singer, cardio may not seem like an essential trait to have but when they’re performing 40 songs with dancing too, they’ve got to make sure they’re fit to go and Taylor Swift reveals how she maintains her form.
Across 180 minutes, the Grammy-winning artist will perform the aforementioned 40 tracks but will also dance to them, dive down a hole and change costumes 16 times in what is a physically demanding routine.
For her Eras Tour, she then goes on to repeat this on 151 different occasions across the globe resulting in an astonishing 6040 songs sung, and 2416 costume changes, by the completion of the record-breaking series of concerts.
“I knew this tour was harder than anything I’d ever done before by a long shot,” Swift said to Time. “Every day, I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud.”
Swift began training for the gigs six months before she embarked on the journey and with faster songs she would sprint, whilst for the slower-paced tracks she would slow her pace down to a jog.
How does it help?
The whole process will intensely work the cardiovascular system and the lungs, which will be desperate for more oxygen for red blood cells to ferry around the body.
Whilst ensuring that the 33-year-old will not run out of breath, she also conditions her muscles to be able to handle the build-up of lactic acid through anaerobic respiration.
“When singing, you take deep breaths and exercise muscles like the diaphragm, lungs, and abdominal muscles,” Sarah Campus, founder of LDN Mums Fitness said to The Sun. “Which can make you fitter.
“Increasing your lung capacity will help improve your overall stamina, and in time, you’ll see that you can run longer distances without feeling so breathless.”
It will also boost her mental health as singing is strong correlated with a more positive mindset and the release of endorphins, one of the body’s happy chemicals.
“Naturally, you will be circulating more oxygen as you breathe more,” Campus added. “Boosting the happy hormones, endorphins and energy levels.”