New Year, New You? You’re Gonna Need a Montage (So Here’s Ten of the Best)

âShow a lot of things happening at once / Remind everyone of whatâs going on / And with every shot show a little improvement / To show it all would take too long.â
The song “Montageâ from 2004âs Team America: World Police neatly explains the editing technique of quick cuts between shots. And through puppets pumping iron to cheesy rock, Team America hilariously illustrates how using montages to fast-track training in films has become a ripe clichĂ©: âEven Rocky had a montage.â More like six.
The first, 1976âs Rocky, is often wrongly credited as the first training montage ever, although itâs âcertainly one of the most memorable and enjoyableâ to Dr. Lindsay Steenberg, a senior lecturer in film studies at Oxford Brookes University. But training montages have been around at least as long as Hollywood has been knocking out boxing films: 1931âs The Champ is a favourite early film of Steenberg. War films, with their ragtag bands of misfits moulded into tight units, also contain some âtreasuresâ.
Training montages found currency in the 1980s and the era of MTV when films increasingly featured pop songs. Music is a key ingredient in the secret sauce of the training montage, demarcating it as a special moment – particularly if the music is pop, not score. âInsulated unitsâ of cinema that revolve around spectacle, training montages naturally lend themselves to online distribution as clips, says Steenberg, while their music finds its way onto our workout playlists. Theyâre âperfect pop culture trading cardsâ.
Part of the appeal of training montages is that weâve seen the payoff. âWe know the montage works and we can find inspiration by mirroring it in our own training,â says Steenberg, whose own workout playlist includes âYouâre The Bestâ by Joe Esposito from the tournament montage in 1984âs The Karate Kid. (âWax on, wax offâ isnât a montage, sorry.)
Training montages work on a number of levels. In her book The Joy Of Movement, Dr Kelly McGonigal, a research psychologist, and lecturer at Stanford University (as well as a group fitness instructor) explains how watching movement triggers âa sympathetic responseâ: your heart rate rises, and your premotor cortex fires. You sense the actions in your own body, which makes the experience not just visual but visceral.Â
Rooted in our mirror neuron system, this âembodied empathyâ is an instinctive attempt to understand others and âsurely part of the thrill of watching sports, dance or stuntsâ. As well as giving us pleasure, it also broadens âour own sense of whatâs possible for ourselvesâ. Hashtag fitspo, as the ‘grammers would say.
Following American investment in âmyths of individualism and meritocracyâ, the main lesson from training montages, says Steenberg, is that âwe have the power to make ourselvesâ, which âtakes work and must be earnedâ. But hard-bodied self-determination can develop a heart-hearted lack of sympathy for others who are perceived as too lazy to do likewise, rather than disadvantaged.Â
Some scholars see training montages as a manifestation of âbio-powerâ, a celebration of the able, white, male body that casts a shadow over other and, the suggestion is, lesser bodies. But then these Nietzchean, if not tights-wearing, supermen are often perfectly sculpting themselves to fight tyranny and totalitarianism – conflicts Steenberg finds âinfinitely fascinatingâ. Itâs complicated.
Viewing Eighties action films in their cultural context of Cold War politics post-Vietnam and a backlash of ‘hard’ masculinity against feminism, Steenberg shows her students the training montage from 1985âs Rocky IV – but not as a cautionary tale.
Instead, she encourages them to think about what makes the âglorious and glittering cinematic jewelsâ that are training montages such a joy to watch, re-watch, share, and compile into top-ten lists. And she wonât deny jogging up the same steps in Philadelphia as Rocky âin reverent homageâ. Training montages have the undeniable power to move us.
10 Of The Best Training Montages
Rocky (1976)
The iconic training montage and song: the opening trumpets of composer Bill Contiâs Academy Award-nominated âGonna Fly Nowâ provoke a practically Pavlovian response to pull on grey sweats, go for a run, and punch meat.
âPower songsâ that change our mood and physiology have strong âextramusical associations,â writes McGonigal: they trigger âpositive emotions, images and meaningâ based on personal memories, pop culture (if a song was the soundtrack to a film, for example), the performers or the lyrics. But âthe most importantâ for pushing you are the words. âGonna Fly Nowâ is, like Rocky, hard to beat.
Batman Begins (2005)
In his fascinating book Becoming Batman: The Possibility Of A Superhero, professor of kinesiology and neuroscience (and martial arts black belt) E Paul Zehr concludes that a traumatically orphaned billionaire could theoretically hone the Dark Knightâs prodigious skills and abilities, but itâd take the best part of two decades.
In this origin story, it takes Christian Baleâs Bruce Wayne about four minutes. But then his instructor is Liam Neeson. âThe training is nothing,â says Ducard. âThe will is everything – the will to act.â Youâll never skip a session again. All thatâs missing is a killer song – like âWhoâs The (Bat)Manâ.
Kill Bill: Vol 2 (2004)
Under âThe Cruel Tutelage of Pei Meiâ, Uma Thurmanâs relentlessly brutalised but never beaten Beatrix Kiddo is forced to carry water up steps, three-inch punch her way through a piece of wood, and – most challenging of all – eat rice with chopsticks. âIt is the wood that should fear your hand – not the other way around,â says her uncompromising kung-fu master in this reverent homage to old-school martial arts films.
Indeed, Tarantino-level movie nerds will recognise beard-swishing Pei Mei as Gordon Liu, the trainee in Seventies chopsocky classic The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin. Speaking of whichâŠ
The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin (1978)
Named by cinema cognoscenti as one of the best action films of all time in Time, this influential kung-fu flick is also well-known among hip-hop circles for having inspired the lyrical vocabulary of seminal crew Wu-Tang Clan with its tale of Chinese villagers rising against Manchu oppressors.
Liuâs vengeful student joins a Shaolin temple where, in a six-minute sequence described by Empire as âone of the most awesome montages in movie history, and definitely one of the longestâ, he works his way through the leg chamber, the sword chamber and the âusing a staff to hit bags, pull big stone blocks and spin little metal discs without slicing your arm open on spikesâ chamber.
Mulan (1998)
âDid they send me daughters, when I asked for sons?â wonders gratuitously shirtless captain Li Shang as he trains hapless Chinese army recruits to repel the invading Huns. If he knew that the one who kicks him onto his butt was really Fa Mulan, in disguise to save her elderly father from military service, he mightâve changed his tune: âIâll Make A Man Out Of Youâ, a banger and, you suspect, a sneaky critique of masculine ideals.
Strength and discipline, symbolised by the weights that Mulan shimmies up a pole with to retrieve Liâs arrow, arenât unique to men – nor how Disneyâs anti-damsel saves the day.
Rocky IIIÂ
A training montage clichĂ© in themselves, Rocky and rival turned coach Apollo Creedâs beach sprints are set to âGonna Fly Nowâ – not âEye Of The Tigerâ, which comes in an earlier, non-training montage.
Nevertheless, itâs scientifically proven that listening to âEye Of The Tigerâ can help you combat fatigue and have more fun doing so, no doubt partly due to âits association with a fighter who wonât quit and its lyrics about rising to a challengeâ, as Dr McGonigal writes. To quote Survivor guitarist Frankie Sullivan: âItâs about saying: âIâm not going to try to go to the gym Monday – I am going to go to the gym Monday.ââ
The Incredibles (2004)
In this short, sweet and very literal training montage, early-retired superhero Mr Incredible gets his fitness back on track after 15 years of domestication, by lifting locomotives. That not only stops his runaway middle-age spread, but also makes him a better husband and father.
Incredible, but true – a study cited by Dr McGonigal shows that exercise leads to positive social interactions with family and friends – which should help convince your partner of the need for âyou timeâ. Another study showed that married couples who exercise together report higher âmarital satisfactionâ. Well, Elastigirl certainly seems happyâŠ
Creed (2015)
Yes, another Rocky film. But this spin-off riffs on the formula to create something satisfyingly familiar yet exhilaratingly fresh, Michael B Jordanâs Adonis âDonnieâ Johnson running through the Philly streets in grey sweats to Meek Millâs âLord Knowsâ with a nod to âGonna Fly Nowâ.
And thereâs an emotional one-two punch, Donnie confronting his destiny as Apolloâs son while Rocky faces his toughest opponent: cancer. âI usually did that with one hand,â he says as Donnie does press-ups on the hospital floor, elegiacally reminded us of the now-trainerâs own majestic prime, long passed.
GI Jane (1997)
In one of Steenbergâs favourite training montages, US Navy Intelligence officer Jordan OâNeil, the first woman to undergo gruelling selection for the fictional âCombined Reconnaissance Teamâ, masters one-arm press-ups to the ironic tune of âMama Told Me Not To Comeâ.
Training montages have traditionally been reserved for male warriors, and the empowerment here is, Dr Steenberg says, limited by the eroticisation of Demi Mooreâs body. But then men are also often eroticised, sometimes not so subtly, in training montages, which are âan alibiâ for admiring their bodies. Equal opportunities, after all.
Rocky IV (1985)
Following the franchise, and indeed ’80s, diktat that bigger is better, this unapologetic piece of propaganda is perhaps the ultimate training montage – because itâs actually two. A great first track for a workout playlist, the slow-building âTraining Montageâ by synth maestro Vince DiCola takes Rocky from those tentative first steps out into the cold to what you think is a fist-pumping conclusion.
But that was merely the warm-up for âHearts On Fireâ by John Cafferty. Stairs? Pah. Here, Rocky runs up a mountain – in a shearling jacket and beanie. Itâs almost impossible to watch this and not want to work out.