To wear headphones in the gym, or not to wear them?

My IPod Nano broke down a few days ago. Of course I cursed the defective technology of Apple, but in my heart of hearts, I knew that the fact that it had had two accidents in the last three months, both closely related to the scenario where you drop it as you are taking it out of your pocket to find a tune you actually want to listen to as opposed to the myriads of moody albums you appear to have downloaded from your husband's ITunes library by mistake, but you take it out a bit too quickly because you are doing this at the same time as you are adjusting the strap of your workbag which has fallen to your elbow because it is overloaded with work laptop, personal IPad, gym kit and three weeks' worth of food, and you are trotting to the station rather than walking because you have left the house late because one of the kids wouldn't wake up etc etc...and it falls to the ground as you are trotting, and you tread on it heavily a nanosecond after your sluggish, too-early-in-the-morning brain clocks what has happened. I've done that twice. Probably three times. So not only is it my fault that my fake silver Nano has finally downed tools and refused to co-operate, it is a miracle it has managed to stagger this far, considering that accident number 3 was at least 2 months ago. I can cope with a music-free gap in my life of about, ooh, 24 hours. But no longer. This is because music is essential to me in the gym. But, I have no time to rush to the nearest Apple shop to buy my replacement, shoot home, open up ITunes, register my new Nano, and transfer my music library on to it.  I have therefore had to order it online and while waiting for it to arrive, I am faced with the prospect of at least three music free sessions at the gym.  Total disaster, I tell myself. Upbeat music is essential to me at the gym to motivate me. All that sports science that says, if you listen to music with the right amount of Beats Per Minute, you up the tempo and intensity of your workout accordingly, totally resonates with me. I go to a gym where a lot of oldies work out which means that if you rely on the music that they pipe through the loudspeaker then you are faced with the peculiar, slightly surreal prospect of lifting weights to the warbling of Perry Como. But all right, worse things have happened at sea, and for three days I am just going to have to get on with it. I am in the very last stages of my Matt Roberts Lose Your Male Paunch workout (see previous posts for details on why I would be doing this particular workout...) so at least I have something to focus on. And in fact, all goes well. It goes so well, that I find myself revisiting my theology about headphones in the gym. Here are the advantages, I have discovered, of not wearing headphones in the gym. 1. When you do tortuous sit ups in groups of 20 lifting a weight over your head at the same time (Matt Roberts, no 4 in the 8 Step  Lose Your Paunch Workout), you will have a fighting chance of completing the set because you will not have to keep stopping to readjust your headphones which have lost out to gravity and have slipped uncompromisingly, over your eyes. 2. If you do the early bird workout, generally at least an hour before older members arrive, the gym music is surprisingly and pleasantly upbeat, even approaching modern (if Michael Jackson "Can You Feel It) counts as modern, and next to Mr Como it surely does), and provides a welcome contrast to the four hundredth listening of my Black Eyed Peas singles. And 3). No headphones means you are privy to all the hilarious conversations that go on around you. In a heavily male dominated section of the gym - the end where the weights are - conversation is, frankly, pretty inane and highly missable, there are still some gems. Hey, mate, where's Pete gone? Oh he's still downstairs, chatting up some chick. Well tell him to get up here, he's supposed to be exercising his abs, not the ones below that. Oh ho ho ho. For at least a day I tell myself the no headphones option is making me focus more on my workout and less on the music, too. But this morning I change my mind. This morning's workout experience provided me with these profound disadvantages. 1. No headphones means you can hear every breath, grunt, and bodily function of those workout out around you. And it is a well known fact that working out can induce bodily functions that may be funny, or may be undignified, but are generally, disgusting and certainly not things you want to be witnessing (or smelling) from a complete stranger, and a sweaty one at that. Even worse is the realisation that listening to really loud boom boom music means I cannot be absolutely sure I haven't been grunting or having my own personal bodily functions, to which I may well have been blissfully ignorant.  Just the thought freezes me, mid-crunch. 2. Sometimes the gym stops piping music, and even though it may only be for a few seconds, the gym goes excruciatingly quiet, which makes me hold my breath. Holding your breath while working out is, like, really, really bad for you. 3. Wearing headphones allows you to imagine you are not in some horribly, sweaty gym, but in fact working out on the set of X Factor or on a beach, in some foreign country, or in your bedroom - anywhere, in fact, but on this smelly mat, next to smelly blokes, looking at mildewed ceilings, and forcing myself through round 4 of the Lose Your Paunch Workout. Right. That Nano had better arrive tomorrow or else.