A playlist to help you flex

I know this will sound sanctimonious, but the gym is my temple (there, I said it). It's a sacred space where sweat and steel forge resilience. I'm a 65-year-old devotee still hitting the iron three to four days a week.

- Sanjoy Narayan

This journey began in my late-30s, in part as a response to an early health warning. The weights soon became a full-blown obsession.

From the raw grit of 1970s classic rock to the cerebral pulse of modern jazz, I've scoured genres for the perfect sonic fuel to power my lifts. Here's how I went from punk rock deadlifts to squatting with Miles Davis—and why jazz became the ultimate soundtrack to strength-training.

In the early days, I was inspired by the musician Henry Rollins's visceral essays on weightlifting. ("The Iron never lies to you," he writes in one. "You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you're a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal.")