Punjabi Gym Songs — A Workout Playlist That Actually Hits

The record that made the Canadian Punjabi scene impossible to ignore. It is not fast, but the low end is enormous and the delivery is flat and confident rather than frantic, which is better for heavy sets than anything hectic. Use it for lifting blocks, not for cardio.

Jasmine Sandlas and Garry Sandhu trading lines over a hard electronic beat. Jasmine Sandlas is one of very few women fronting this end of Punjabi music, and her delivery is the sharpest thing on the record — it cuts through even at gym volume.

The title track of Diljit Dosanjh's 2020 album G.O.A.T. He does not usually sound like this — it is a boast record, all swagger and no romance — which makes it comfortably the most gym-appropriate thing in a catalogue otherwise full of love songs.

Shubh's breakout, and one of the most-streamed Punjabi tracks of its year. A sparse beat, a lot of empty space, and a hook that just repeats — which is everything you want when you are counting reps and have entirely stopped processing the words.

Karan Aujla over a hard, bass-forward beat that sits much closer to North American rap production than to anything folk-derived. It is one of the tracks that moved him from a respected writer for other people into a headline act in his own right.

Mankirt Aulakh's best-known track, and loud and repetitive entirely by design. The beat does all the work while the vocal keeps time over the top of it, which is exactly the division of labour you want from a song you are not really listening to.

One of Amrit Maan's early hits and a clean example of the mid-2010s Punjabi car song: a specific vehicle, a specific attitude, and a beat that holds a straight line from start to finish without ever changing its mind.