It’s not often that I include iconic classic rock songs in my workout repertoire. I am definitely drawn to including ironically (yet unbelievably awesome) shallow pop on my playlist — so keeping a running pace to The Police‘s “King of Pain” is kind of new to me:

This is quite a bitchin’ song. And Sting has so much tantric swagger that it makes me quiver with delight.

However, I do have another reason for making this song an integral part of my life. It’s called Winter Guard International — also known as “The Sport of the Arts” — and indeed it is. Handling and tossing various equipment such as flags, non-functioning rifles and fake sabres in themed costume attire constitutes as a sport and an art. It’s like rhythmic gymnastics — but a little more theatrical and just as important as things such as air guitaring and speed stacking.

Upon obsessing over watching past color guard shows, I stumbled across this 1995 routine by a team that called themselves “Every Body”. With The Police’s song as their source music to toss and twirl flags, they clearly were inspired by Madonna‘s performance of “Vogue” at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards (or they just blatantly it ripped off):

…and let’s not forget the use of the song in the very, very, very first season of So You Think You Can Dance where Kamilah and Nick (the very first SYTYCD winner) pranced around with a cane to this seminal classic:

Lastly, you know a song is a classic when Alanis Morissette can use acoustic magic and make it sound angsty and kind of angry:

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