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, Fla. “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 realized I was never, ever going to finish this workout.
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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 fervor of a Swift-fueled 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 3½ 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.
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“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.”
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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.
“Oh my gosh. That’s insane.”
Vaillant wasn’t a runner before she attempted the Taylor workout. But seeing Swift’s determination made her want to try.
She decided to do it outside, since no one would be around to hear her singing. She ran half a mile in her Tampa neighborhood before realizing she couldn’t go any farther. It was too difficult on her lungs, she said, and she couldn’t help herself from running what felt like a 7-minute per mile clip as she jammed out.
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“When you start running at a good pace, and then simultaneously singing, you don’t go as far as you think you could,” the 29-year-old said. “I don’t find running enjoyable, but by her sharing that workout, it’s made actually it fun for me.”
Since night three, Tampa, Vaillant listened to Swift nonstop, landing in the top 0.5 percent of Taylor Swift listeners on Spotify by year’s end. She said Swift helped her be more comfortable with who she is because the superstar is always true to herself. She might try the run again once the weather warms up.
Jennifer Brown, 42, said her daughter made her a “hardcore Swiftie.” She started running in 2022 as part of her journey to losing nearly 200 pounds. She also took voice lessons growing up and understood how hard it is to sing and move nonstop.
“I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh that’s insane,’” she said of her reaction to reading about the workout. “I just had to give it a go. But I didn’t have the fitness trainers like her. I just had to be smart and try not to die.”
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She almost vomited the first time she tried, realizing she underestimated how hard it would be, a lesson she encouraged others to follow. She ran and sang for just over an hour, walking when she felt particularly out of breath. She soon was feeling lightheaded and decided to stop.
Still, she’d belted her favorite songs, replaced the lyrics in the song “22” to reflect her own age and felt her stress dissipate.
“I obviously embellished,” said Brown, whose video has over a million views and was featured in a People Magazine article. “I made my own concert for myself.”
Her 22-year-old daughter only shook her head and said she wasn’t surprised when Brown explained why she’d been screaming in their basement in Fort Dodge, Iowa: to emulate Taylor’s workout and bring joy.
The next week, she decided she’d finish out the set list. She dreaded feeling so winded again, but once she got to Folklore, she felt “free.”
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Brown lives a four-hour drive from her beloved Kansas City Chiefs. She went to night two, Kansas City, and watched her daughter’s hands shake and her eyes water as the countdown ended and Taylor came on the stage. She’d never seen her daughter be so joyful. She sees Swift as “authentic,” something she tries to be herself.
Running the Swiftie workout was just another way of connecting, with her daughter, with Swift, with the entire community.
“Do I know her personally? No,” she said. “But do I act like I do? Yes. Is that weird? Kind of.”
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