Training Montage

"The hour's approaching, to give it your best
You've got to reach your prime.
That's when you need to put yourself to the test
And show us a passage of time
We're gonna need a montage (montage!)
Ooh it takes a montage (montage!)"

— "Montage", Team America: World Police ^note originally from South Park

A variant of the Hard-Work Montage in which a character builds themselves up over time in preparation for a battle or athletic competition. Usually accompanied by uplifting music. If it's supposed to be taken seriously, they'll use something original, or just appropriate. If they're going for a full-on parody, it'll be one of the most well-recognised montage songs, or something reminiscent. If "Gonna Fly Now" from Rocky can't be used, then Joe Esposito's "You're the Best" or Survivor's immortal "Eye Of The Tiger" makes for a good substitute.

Closely related to the Lock-and-Load Montage, and often overlaps with the Failure Montage and Testing Range Mishap. See also Workout Fanservice.

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Examples

Advertising

• In the Hotels.com ad, "Wait Training" (see here), the trope is Played for Laughs.
  "I'm not very good at waiting."
  "Then we must teach you... to wait."
• Here's one for a Budweiser commercial, with a dog training a horse. No, really.
• Another one from the early 2000s was this Isuzu ad featuring the return of David Leisure's Joe Isuzu character; in which he's shown training to Eye of the Tiger.

Anime & Manga

• The original Gunbuster had one played so straight it comes across as a homage to Rocky. The "running along the water" scene is even duplicated - albeit with the protagonist inside a giant robot.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS' Teana and Subaru had one of these set to Subaru's Image Song when they were training for their two-on-one battle against Nanoha. It, ahh... didn't turn out too well.
• Episode 6 of Beyond the Boundary has one where the gang spend an entire week training for an epic song and dance number that they need to perform in order to defeat a monster. It Makes Sense in Context.
• Episode 2 of Kaleido Star uses this when Sora preps herself to duplicate the "Golden Phoenix", a favorite trick of Layla Hamilton, one of her idols. She comes oh-so-close to pulling it off, perfecting the spin technique but missing the opposite trapeze bar by thatmuch. Layla, who normally Suffers Newbies Poorly, is impressed enough to allow Sora to stay with the Kaleido Stage crew.
• Chapter 239 of Negima! Magister Negi Magi has one, complete with Exploding Calendar.
  • A previous chapter had one for Yue, bonus points as part of the training montage involved actual flying.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion played it surprisingly straight when Shinji and Asuka have to learn how to work together by playing some weird Japanese hybrid of Twister and DDR. Also includes exploding calendar. Notable because the episode was produced about four years before the original DanceDanceRevolution was introduced. Watch it today and you're liable to think that the bit was inspired by DDR. In fact, considering how monumentally popular Eva was in Japan, the reverse may be true.
• Subverted in Excel♡Saga, when Excel has to win a bowling competition and runs into Nabeshin in a restroom, who reveals he is a legendary bowling coach and offers to train her. The show then skips directly to the END of the training montage with the two of them watching the sunset on a beach Karate-Kid style and Nabeshin saying "I've taught you all I know." Excel then reveals that the reason we didn't see any training is because there wasn't any; all they did was go look at a sunset.
  • Pedro, however, plays it straight (Rocky parodies aside), when he is training to fight Gomez.
• Naturally, the volleyball anime Haikyuu!! has quite a few examples. Such as The Protagonist Hinata training with anyone who will throw him a ball after losing to Kageyama's team in middle school. usually, the team gets such montage before tournament arcs.
• Blue Gender (an atrociously foreshortened compilation of the series) contains the world's bare minimum elements for a training montage: a total zero at the start—>someone correcting how he holds a gun—>some guy going "hey kid, you've got a knack for this!"—>and suddenly, Yuji being ready to go into battle.
• Used in Ayane's High Kick when the eponymous hero is training for (what she believes to be) her first Pro-wrestling/Kickboxing mixed martial arts match. The montage includes her practicing punches and kicks near the road by car-light, getting in the stomach by her trainer with a medicine ball while doing sit-ups, doing pull-ups while wearing a weight-suit, and of course jogging up stairs. All set to an upbeat rock tune, as one would expect.
• Love Hina has one ticking down the days till the Tokyo U Entrance Exam. Naru is doing well—Keitaro, on the other hand...
• The iDOLM@STER - Several throughout the showing, the first one being along the ending sequence on the first episode.
• Samurai Champloo:
  • In the Baseball Episode, Manzou the Saw is narrating events, including scenes in which our heroes are learning the mysterious art of baseball in a single night. "At this point things get rather boring, so I'll skip the details."
  • Mugen is challenged by a so-far undefeatable samurai with mysterious powers, their duel to take place at the next full moon. For once he's not sure he can defeat his opponent, so Mugen engages in activities such as chopping wood, balancing on logs, carrying heavy statues up temple stairs, meditating by a waterfall, bungy-jumping off a tori gate, and falling asleep from sheer exhaustion.
• Haruka of Kotoura-san goes through one in episode 5, as the local Cute Clumsy Girl was assigned to race in the inter-class relay... and that doesn't work. She still tripped on her feet.
• Episode 17 of Space☆Dandy has a hilariously on-point parody of all the examples above it on this page, and then some - complete with an 80's-tastic Hot-Blooded training montage song.
• Fairy Tail: Triple Subverted, when preparing for the Grand Magic Games. It's set up perfectly for one, but it turns out the celestial spirit world is in trouble. Looks like they're going to be busy for the next three months... Oh wait, it's only a party, looks like the Training Montage is back on! OH WAIT. Maybe not.
• My Hero Academia has a short training montage as early as its second chapter, when All Might trains Midoriya to become physically strong enough to receive All Might's Quirk before the UA entrance exams. In ten months, Midoriya goes from being lanky to being positively ripped.
• Godannar: Anna Aoi-Saruwatari has one when training to become a Robot Pilot in the second episode.
• One appears in My Heart is Beating to represent the months the water polo team is practicing for the school championships.
• In the Warrior Cats manga The Lost Warrior, there's a section where Millie asks Graystripe to teach her to fight, and it shows training sessions spanning several days, interspersed with her asking questions about Clan life, with Graystripe narrating over it about her progress.
• World's End Harem: Fantasia: Arc spends a full year in this after Lati informs him the conditions to become a proper receptacle for Macht: he practices swordplay with Celine and studies politics and economics with various learned men, while eating animal livers and powdered mandragora root to build up his body and magic potential, and actively avoiding sexual stimulation to maximize his male essence. This all takes place over the course of about one chapter.

Asian Animation

• BoBoiBoy: When BoBoiBoy finally becomes BoBoiBoy Water whose power is needed to exploit BoBoiBot's weakness, he faces the problem of BoBoiBoy Water being a lazy, unathletic bum who can't use his power to fight properly. Cue a montage of Papa Zola training Water until he becomes skilled and slim again.
• Lamput: Much of "Fracture" is built around the docs training Lamput back into health when he gets a fracture, which is presented as a montage complete with a song that sounds like "Eye of the Tiger" playing in the background.

Comedy

• In one of his more hilarious spoken word bits, Henry Rollins describes his determination to attempt to outplay Iggy Pop, one of his music idols. After getting effortlessly squashed by Iggy the first two times he tried this (and to add insult to injury, Iggy humbly acted like he hadn't even noticed Henry's attempt to upstage him), Rollins learns that he'll have a third chance. To make sure that he can play better, harder, and longer than ever in his life, Rollins went on a grueling months long fitness and training that he describes in detail... and Iggy still blows him out. Although at least this time Iggy acknowledged Henry's effort and had to actually try a little bit to destroy Rollins.

Comic Books

• Kick-Ass:
  • The original comic has one which consists of Dave working out and telling us he did some Judo.
  • The interquel Hit-Girl (set between the first and the second series) has one for Chris, who goes to Japan to learn combat from ninjas... Who give him impressive-looking but utterly useless exercises (even explicitely ripping off Batman Begins) so the rich but foolish American kid will continue paying them. This continues until Chris catches on and decides to just hire a bodyguard. And he doesn't hire any of the ninjas.
• The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016): A montage of Diana training with Alcippe also shows the young princess aging to adulthood.
• Invader Zim (Oni): Dib goes through one in the first issue, as he tries to lose all the weight he gained sitting around waiting for Zim to come back. Gaz calls him out at one point for singing his own montage music to help the process along, then provides it herself (if only so that he stops being so disgusting).

Fan Works

• In Amazing Fantasy, most of Issue 5, "Leaning Curve", is devoted to Peter teaching Izuku the basics of being Spider-Man, from Wall Crawling to building and maintaining his own web-shooters.
• In The Apprentice, the Student, and the Charlatan, we get a sequence where a month or so goes by with Nova training to use an energy beam and shield spells, and we see him progress from barely being able to keep up a shield for more than a few strikes and barely able to control his beam, to being able to tank hits from three unicorns at once until being brought down by underhanded trickery, and to have the touch of a feather or the force of a train with his beam.
• Borne of Caution: Blatantly lampshaded by Zinnia at the start of Chapter 2-27:
  Zinnia: Every good story has a training montage, and ours starts today!
• The Night Unfurls: The limitations of this genre means that no music or soundtrack is played, but several chapters of the original open with training sessions between Kyril and his apprentices. In all occasions, they are shown sparring against each other, and they don't have to worry about any long-lasting injuries, thanks to their wounds healing faster in the Hunter's Dream. Not every single moment of their training process is shown, in order to avoid long-winded training arcs that are unrelated to the main plot at large.
• Chapter 16 of Pokémon Reset Bloodlines features a scene with Ash and his Pokémon training Goomy to help him learn offensive moves. A sidestory focused on Brock and Pike Queen Lucy also shows them doing some sparring matches, since she's training him to get back to the top of his game.
• In Son of the Sannin, Chapters 13 and 14 show plenty of scenes of Naruto and company undergoing several different training courses during their academy years. Later, Chapters 25 and 26 show the preparation for the Chunin Exam finals.
• This Bites!:
  • In Chapter 27, while Luffy, Usopp and Chopper are looking for the South Bird and Masira is busy upgrading the Merry, the rest of the crew has one of these: Zoro and Leo spar to both see how Leo can improve and give Zoro a good fight, Sanji and Boss spar to break in Boss's new weapon, Vivi and Carue spar with Raphey and Mikey to help get the former used to their new weapons, Donny helps Nami with her staff-fighting, Robin "weight-lifts" using her extra arms, Shoujou helps Soundbite hone his Gastro-Blast technique, and Cross goes running with Lassoo in his bazooka form to get used to the weight.
  • In Chapter 35, after gaining knowledge on future techniques and other info that they can use to get stronger from Cross, they enter another one: Zoro perfects the Nine Sword Style: Asura technique and works on Iron Body; Sanji works on Diable Jambe, Tempest Kick, Moonwalk, and Shave; Conis figures out just how much of a Walking Arsenal she can become while Su makes sure she doesn't overload herself; Lassoo joins them; Usopp and Nami work out how to integrate the Eisen Whip into the now Perfect Clima-Tact; Cross tests his new armor and general fighting style with Mikey and Donny's help, the remaining dugongs train in their own way, and Vivi and Carue are... running laps while presumably working with the necklace they gained in Alabasta. Luffy, notably, is absent for the first half of this regime because he's rendered unconscious by Chopper, who worked to lessen, if not outright prevent, the lasting effects that Gear Second or its prototype will have on Luffy.
• True Potential: Chapters 99, 100, and 101 are dedicated to Team 3 getting Senjutsu training from their respective summons. In addition, Team 9 is getting their own training.

Films — Animation

• Animalympics, being a pastiche of the Olympic games, has one of these, showing Bolt Jenkins' training for the games set to Graham Gouldman's "Born To Lose"
• Hercules also features one as the titular character goes from lanky and uncoordinated to buff and skilled while his Satyr trainer sings "One Last Hope".
• The Incredibles does this, with Bob getting back in shape by lifting train cars at the rail yard. Elastigirl finds the newly-buff Bob rather hot.
• Mulan: The training montage depicts the entire platoon of trainees progressing from pathetic failures to a capable team, to the strains of the (intentionally) ironically entitled tune, "I'll Make a Man Out of You".
• Inevitably used in Kung Fu Panda. A great many of Po's training exercises became deliberately hilarious due to either his weight or the way in which Shifu used food to motivate him. Surprisingly, despite Master Crane being in the film, there is no Homage Shot of the Crane Stance from The Karate Kid. Even though it's to be expected, Po's training still works, managing to be uplifting and awesome, probably due to Hans Zimmer's^note and John Powell's excellent music. Of course it gets trumped by the dumpling fight a few minutes later...
• The main character of Persepolis sings along to her "Eye of the Tiger" montage near the end of the film. Considering that she is an Iranian who almost exclusively speaks Persian and French, that she tackles the song in its native English, and she's not actually very good at singing in any case, the results are...amusing.
• Ratatouille:
  • "Let me make this easy to remember: keep your station clean, or I WILL KILL YOU!"
  • And there's a previous one where Remy and Linguini learn to cook in unison.
• Goofy has one in An Extremely Goofy Movie while trying to boost his grades in college. While he studies his textbooks, Goofy is also literally exercising.
• In An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, Tiger, the Cowardly Lion of the series, has a montage while training to be like a dog so he can help Wiley Burp and Fievel take on Cat R. Waul. The montage includes Tiger doing push-ups, walking through tires, beating up a Cat R. Waul dummy, and fetching a bone.
• In Moana, in preparation for their Final Battle with Te Kā, we are treated to a montage showing Maui exercising his shape-shifting abilities and Moana learning how to sail and wayfind.
• Anastasia: "Learn To Do It", where Anya has Dimitri and Vlad tutor her on how to act like royalty, as part of their scam to present her as the lost princess and get ten million rubles. Predictably, she's unsteady for the beginning, but all of a sudden, it does a 180 and everything starts coming absolutely natural to her, and she learns even faster than Dimitri and Vlad expected. That's because she actually IS Anastasia: the training started to break through her amnesia.
• Zootopia: Judy Hopps (Zootopia's first bunny police officer) goes through tough training at the Zootopia police academy, which even includes a boxing match against a rhino.
• Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus: Like in the comic issue that the first part of the movie is based on, Dib undergoes one of these to lose the massive amount of weight he gained while Zim was in hiding. Here though, it's intercut with another montage of Zim trying desperately to figure out what Phase 2 of his big Evil Plan was supposed to be.
• Sing 2: Johnny's dance lessons with Nooshy are shown through a montage. They start early in the morning and continue well into the night. Johnny starts out uncertain and often pausing to look over to Nooshy for direction. As the scenes progress, he grows more and more confident, steady, and skilled in his moves, and they are shown moving in sync without pause.
• Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Dunk for Future features one of the goats preparing to play in the big city basketball game, starting off rather poorly with such mishaps as Sparky exercising while playing a Nintendo Switch and Tibbie bumping into a lot of people while running, but getting better as the montage continues.
• Wreck-It Ralph: The sequence of Ralph teaching Vanellope how to drive a racecar, set to "Shut Up and Drive".
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie: There is a sequence of Mario training for his journey on an obstacle course containing elements from the games, including Donut Blocks, Bill Blasters and a Goal Pole, all accompanied by "Holding Out for a Hero".

Films — Live-Action

• The Perfect Weapon (1991): A flashback to Jeff's childhood of Kenpo training is shown early in the movie, with him progressing through the various belts.
• Rocky series, obviously, although it's a bit different in every movie, but it's usually set to some variation of "Gonna Fly Now", and this trope was previously called "Gonna Fly Now Montage":
  • In the first, it's "Gonna Fly Now".
  • In Rocky II, it's a remixed Gonna Fly Now, only with kids added in to show how much everybody loves Rocky.
  • Prior to that there is a training montage set to the "Going the Distance" music from the first movie.
  • In Rocky III, Gonna Fly Now returns yet again.
  • In Rocky IV , we have both a regular training music montage and "Hearts on Fire".
  • In Rocky V, the featured song is "Go For It! (Heart and Fire)".
  • Rocky Balboa saw a rousing return of "Gonna Fly Now".
  • Creed, where Rocky is the trainer instead of the trainee, features Meek Mill's "Lord Knows / Fighting Stronger".
• The Karate Kid (1984) spoofs this, by showing the training without uplifting music and Daniel resenting the training, since he hasn't been told of its purpose - he thinks it's simple household chores. Later used straight becoming one of the definitive training montages that gets parodied today with the aforementioned "You're the Best" theme (which in the film itself only appears during the tournament montage, not during training).
  • Carried over into Cobra Kai, when Daniel uses this tactic on Robby.
• Spoofed in The Harry Hill Movie. At one point, Harry enters a boxing tournament to win money for a new car. After the champ beats the stuffing out of him twice, his Nan points out he hasn’t had a training montage. One montage later, Harry comes back and defeats the guy.
• Any given John G. Avildsen film, really. Aside from Rocky and The Karate Kid you have Lean on Me.
• Spoofed in Adam Carolla's The Hammer. Jerry shuts off his alarm at 6:00 AM to the opening strains of Survivor's Eye of the Tiger. And again at 6:09. And again at 6:18, and again and again until he finally gets up around 11:00 to actually start training.
• Ice Angel: Done when Matt, now inhabiting the body of Sarah, as he learns to be a figure skater now.
• Bananas has one. Being a Woody Allen film, though, Hilarity Ensues.
• The Blind Side: SJ training Michael for football. (This film also has a Hard-Work Montage, with Miss Sue tutoring Michael in academics.)
• Bruce Wayne's training with the League of Shadows in Batman Begins is mostly shown via montage. The accompanying music is more brooding than uplifting, as befits the idea that it's a Batman movie and they're planning to use him to destroy Gotham.
  • A short one appears in The Dark Knight Rises, with Bruce getting back in shape while in the Pit.
• Played relatively straight in Bring It On with the cheerleader training montage after the Toros bought routine is disqualified.
• A good example is this So Bad It's Hilarious training montage from The Man Who Saves the World. Watch the clip and know that this is meant to be serious.
  • Also note that that particular clip is actually spliced together from two different scenes in the film. And that song isn't the same one used in the original film—the original is even cheesier.
• In Mr. Mom, an Homage Montage aimed no doubt at Rocky has Jack Butler and his housewife neighbors losing weight and fixing up his house to this same tune.
• Wet Hot American Summer: "Show me the fever, into the fire. Taking it higher and higher!"
• The film Best of the Best has a training montage showing all the hard work of the U.S. National Karate Team, set to a song with the same title as the movie.
• Highlander III: The Sorcerer (AKA Final Dimension) used this, as the main character trained on a mountain top to defeat his foe.
• Spy Game used this to demonstrate Boy Scout's transformation to naive army grunt to spy.
• Team America: World Police: Lampshaded in "Montage."
• Parodied in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, where the villagers Robin Hood is training routinely fail at basic training, and at one point lose in jousting training to inanimate dummies.
• In Shooter, FBI Rookie Nick Memphis is trained by ex-marine sniper Bobby Lee Swagger over the course of few days on effective sharpshooting, military tactics and advanced camouflage.
• It Happened Here (1966). Used to show the protagonist falling under the sway of the fascist Immediate Action Organisation. At the beginning of the montage the IAO nurses flinch when firing a Webley revolver; by the end all of them are coldly blazing away at their targets.
• Chak De! India: Kabir Khan finally convinces his team that he's the best coach ever: cue title song (literally named "GO INDIA!") and montage of the girls training.
• Kill Bill volume 2. The Bride learns kung fu under Pai Mei, most notably how to punch through a wooden board from only an inch away, which helps her later when she's in a coffin buried alive.
• The Brucesploitation film The Clones of Bruce Lee goes so far as to rip off "Gonna Fly Now" in it's training montage.
• Chuck E. Cheese in the Galaxy 5000 has this when Chuckie crashes into a Hermit's house (who may or may not be Pasqualli). This moment is probably the only decent musical number in the film.
• As Phelous points out, it happens in A Serbian Film of all movies.
• In X-Men: First Class, when Xavier trains the mutant youngsters to properly use their powers.
• Happens in Mirror, Mirror (2012) when the dwarves are training Snow.
• Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring has one, which is strange since it's an acclaimed art film about a Buddhist monk rather than a sports film.
• Soul Surfer: "I don't need easy...I just need possible"
• In the 2011 film Warrior: The training montage for both brothers, overlaid with commentary and Beethoven (Brendan's leitmotif).
• The King's Speech: Here the sport is public speaking, and there are two such montages here. However, the first such sequence may be an Anti-training montage; Albert goes through a ton of humiliating exercises, juxtaposed with his latest speech in which he still sounds horrid. That's exactly what Lionel wants, since his point is that mechanics alone won't fix Albert.
• Mark Wahlberg's character in The Fighter is being montaged while preparing for his final boxing fight.
• Chariots of Fire shows Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell training for the Olympics, with Abrahams doing runs on a track in Cambridge and Liddell running through the highlands of Scotland.
• The Mechanic (2011). Bishop and McKenna using a variety of automatic weapons and a Barrett fifty-calibre rifle on an improvised firing range are alternated with scenes of McKenna's daily routine with his Precious Puppy, which is meant to set up the interest of McKenna's first target, a Manly Gay hitman who likes men with cute dogs.
• Attempting to fit Ender's Game into a 2-hour film, many of the Battle Room battles and fleet simulations given more detail in the book are shown as brief montages. In the first case, the montage makes it a point to show Ender's army's standing rising from the lowest to number one. Why bother showing how brilliant Ender is when you can say it?
• Subverted in The Amateur, a 1981 film about a codebreaker who blackmails the CIA into letting him go into Czechoslovakia and kill the terrorists who murdered his fiancee. To buy time while they find the secrets he's stolen (files on CIA black ops) they send him to The Farm for training in assassination techniques. At the end of the appropriate montage that cuts between the CIA searching everywhere he might have hidden the files and the protagonist training, he tells the CIA to stop screwing around and send him in as he's never going to pass the course anyway.
• In The Color of Money, Eddie's recovery from his Heroic BSoD is a montage of activities to rebuild his skills, including swimming, being fitted for new eyeglasses, and lots of games of pool.
• Cool Runnings has two—one in Jamaica and one in Calgary. Both are Played for Laughs, especially with Sanka.
• Edmond Dantes is trained by the old priest while in prison, in The Count of Monte Cristo (2002). At first it's academic subjects, but then Dantes asks to be trained in swordplay and combat. The old priest agrees, albeit reluctantly. The progress of the training is visually represented by the tunnel that they dig.
• In The Mask of Zorro, Antonio Banderas is trained by old Zorro Anthony Hopkins to become the new Zorro.
• The Mighty Ducks: One per movie. The first one involves the team getting back to basics, while the third one features some Improvised Training.
• Subverted in Captain America: The First Avenger. Before Steve Rogers takes the Super Serum, there's a training montage of him on a military obstacle course that shows just how hopeless he is. After taking the serum he becomes the buff and famous Captain America, but is stuck on the propaganda circuit convincing people to buy war bonds. As per this trope he's shown as awkwardly reading his lines at the start, gets better and more confident as the montage continues, only for it to suddenly end with him being mocked by unimpressed frontline soldiers in Italy.
• Combined with Death Montage for Black Comedy in Edge of Tomorrow. Cage is a New Meat soldier stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop in which he's killed in battle only to wake up alive the previous day. He finds a legendary Action Girl who was once in the same situation and asks her to train him how to survive the battleground. Cue crippling injuries from the training robots, whereupon she shoots him in the head to reset everything to start. Wake up, get trained, get injured, Boom, Headshot!, wake up, get trained, make it to battlefield, Yet Another Stupid Death, wake up, get trained, get injured, Boom, Headshot!, wake up, Boom, Headshot!, wake up...
• The villagers training for the Big Game in Lagaan.
• Used in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with Harry training his classmates in defensive magic, along with a parallel montage of Umbridge and her lackeys trying to foil them.
• Hitman: Inside a heavily guarded facility, a group of young boys are given tattoos of bar codes on the backs of their shaved heads and are then trained in weapons, demolitions, unarmed combat, stamina, and strength to become professionally trained hitmen who operate around the globe.
• Remember the Titans has one that serves a dual purpose—both training the recently-integrated team for football and teaching the black and white players to start respecting each other and work together.
• Several in The Cutting Edge (about a figure skating pair preparing for the 1992 Olympics). One of them getting into shape, another of him developing as a figure skater (he was a hockey player before this), then of them practicing for the Olympics.
• Wonder Woman (2017): The first 30 minutes of the film shows Diana and the other Amazons honing their skills.
• The 1982 Glynnis O'Connor film Melanie is about an intelligent but illiterate young woman in rural Arkansas. When her abusive estranged husband (Don Johnson) kidnaps their young son away from her, she follows him to LA, where she meets a widowed lawyer (Paul Sorvino) who offers to hire her as a housekeeper and to help care for his own little boy. She accepts, but instead of a salary, she asks that he teach her how to read. There follows a quiet montage of her progress (writing her name, applying for a Social Security card, taking driving lessons, etc.), accompanied by Bach's third Brandenburg Concerto.
• Asian School Girls: After the girls secure the weaponry for their Roaring Rampage of Revenge, they pay Hector extra for someone to train them them in their use. This is followed by a montage of them learning martial arts, interspersed with a montage of them working at the strip club.
• House Shark: Near the end of the film is a montage of Abraham training himself in the fighting style of the shark's natural enemy... The mantis.
• The Sea Wolves: The Calcutta Light Horse (a Dad's Army-type unit in WW2 India) are recruited for a deniable mission by British Intelligence, and there's a montage of its middle-aged and over-the hill members trying to get themselves in shape.
  Secretary: [seeing her boss struggling to do a push-up] Mr. Melbourne, are you all right?
  Melbourne: No, I'm having a private heart attack! Now Get Out!
• Youngblood (1986): After Dean leaves the Mustangs, his older brother Kelly puts him through a series of fighting lessons so he won't get beaten up so easily.
• Naked Weapon: Ever since Charlene and other young girls are kidnapped by Madame M, they're forced to go through military-like trainings in order to become professional killers.
• Karate a Muerte en Torremolinos: While learning martial arts from Miyagi; they also learn to eat rice with chopsticks because... it sounds Asian?
• Whip It: Bliss is shown practicing her skating and getting into shape before her first roller derby game. There are shots of her skating along a car, at work, and late into the night.

Literature

• The Dresden Files: Cold Days opens with one of these, with much Lampshade Hanging. And since it's Mab who's doing the training, it's equal parts physical therapy and attempts to murder Harry.
  I could describe the next few weeks in detail, but as bad as they were, they did have a certain routine to them. Besides, in my head, they're a music video montage set to the Foo Fighters' "Walk".
• Lord Dunsany's 1912 work The Book of Wonder included one in the story "How Nuth Would Have Practiced His Art Upon the Gnoles," while Nuth is teaching his apprentice Tonker how to be a thief. This is Older Than Television.
  The details of the likely lad's apprenticeship I do not propose to give; for those that are in the business know those details already, and those that are in other businesses care only for their own, while men of leisure who have no trade at all would fail to appreciate the gradual degrees by which Tommy Tonker came first to cross bare boards, covered with little obstacles in the dark, without making any sound, and then to go silently up creaky stairs, and then to open doors, and lastly to climb.
• Mask (2020): In the middle of the book, the Infinity Trinity are trained in hand-to-hand combat by Hopscotch and agent Noor Khan.

Live-Action TV

• Michael Bluth goes through one in the Arrested Development episode "Notapusy" courtesy of his nephew, Steve Holt.
• Arrow:
  • "The Odyssey". In a flashback to when he was marooned on Lian Yu, Oliver Queen is being trained by Slade Wilson with the requisite montage, but in a subversion his skills don't miraculously improve and he makes a mess of the one job Slade gives him to do (taking out the guard in the control tower) requiring Slade to save him.
  • The episode "The Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak" opens with a montage of Oliver training Roy, Laurel learning boxing from Ted Grant, and Merlyn teaching Thea, causing Thea to wonder what normal people do in the morning. Answer Cut to Felicity doing sit-ups before a workout video and brushing her teeth.
• Parodied in Bargearse (a Gag Dub of Australian cop show Bluey (1976)) where the overweight cop tries jogging to "Gonna Fly Now", only to end up Letting the Air out of the Band when he has a heart attack.
  "It was your fault for playing that Rocky theme!"
• Parodied in The Big Bang Theory when Sheldon and Raj intently study a whiteboard...complete with fast cuts and "Eye of the Tiger" playing in the background. Twice.
• Buffyverse:
  • Lampshaded in the Musical Episode "Once More, With Feeling". The influence of a demon keeps making the residents of Sunnydale break out into song and dance. Buffy is doing weapons training with Giles.
    Buffy: I'm worried our training's gonna turn into a montage from an '80s movie.
    Giles: If we start to hear inspirational power chords, we'll just lie down until it goes away.
  • Angel played it perfectly straight when Angel gets ready to hunt down Darla and Drusilla. It's also played straight in the Buffy movie.
  • Subverted in "When She Was Bad", where Buffy's relentless pounding is used to show she's Not Herself.
• The Colbert Report featured a spooferific training montage in the first episode of the revamped web-animated cartoon Tek Jansen. The Background Music was clearly a parody of "You're the Best" by Joe Esposito.
  • The 4/11/12 episode has Stephen giving a Marine civilian job training... as a television pundit, with a training montage of practicing which camera to talk at, jumping for the microphone, beating strawmen, and wearing a suit, accompanied by a trumpet version of the theme.
• The Daily Show had their version. During their coverage of the 2010 World Cup, British correspondent John Oliver trained to Gonna Fly Now, drinking Heineken and running up the steps - in order to be a more obnoxious soccer fan.
• Parodied on Even Stevens: Louis, having learned that 97-pound-weakling Tom is actually a black belt, asks Tom to "teach me your ways." A montage then depicts Louis failing at preposterously easy tasks (like punching through a celery stalk). He is dismayed to learn that it takes nine years to learn Tom's "ways".
• Parodied in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with hilarity. Will spends time training to fight the bully from the opening sequence.
• In Episode 2 of Galavant, when Isabella decides to make Galavant return to top form. It's even complete with a pseudo-'70s-rock song called "Stand down!" Surprisingly Realistic Outcome, though, and the montage makes Galavant's body so stiff he can't move the next day.
• Game of Thrones:
  • A minor one for Arya in her first "dancing" lesson with Syrio Forel.
  • Arya gets one again in Braavos, training to become a Faceless Man.
• Duncan and Richie have one in Highlander "Eye for an Eye". A portion of the franchise's Queen "Princes of the Universe" theme played with it.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia had a double montage of Dee and Charlie both training for their fights and taking copious amounts of steroids.
  • And one when Charlie tries to teach Mac to play hockey.
• LazyTown had one of these. Sportacus was training Ziggy to be a hero like him. The music even vaguely sounded like the Rocky music.
• Spoofed in an episode of Little Mosque on the Prairie. Babar is walking down the street reading a book of Curling rules and regulations. He proceeds to walk past people playing various other sports and up a flight of stairs, then turns around and holds the book in the air. Oh yea, and an oddly played version of Gonna Fly Now is indeed playing.
• MacGyver (1985): Earl Dent goes through one when he is being trained by his 14 year old daughter Ronnie is preparation for his comeback fight in The Boxing Episode "Split Decision". Lots of running on a beach is involved.
• Parodied in the subplot to the Married... with Children 3-parter "Breaking Up Is Easy To Do", where Kelly trains for a brawl with a rival actress over a movie role. It begins with her trying to drink raw eggs while they're still in their shells.
• Parodied in The Middle, when Sue and Brad are training for a square dance competition. There's even a square dance version of "Eye of the Tiger" playing during the scene.
• Lampshaded and subverted in The Mighty Boosh episode "Killaroo", where Howard's boxing training montage fails to yield any improvement at all.
• Murder, She Wrote: One occurs in "Death Takes a Dive" as Jessica works to get prize fighter 'Blaster' Boyle back into shape for his fight.
• Used with the villain in Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, as she Took a Level in Badass. Linkara's review points out, and solves, the surprising lack of an '80s power ballad in the background (he went with "You're the Best").
  • Also used in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers for Bulk and Skull with a theme song made up for them to become youth police partol.
• Previews for The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien showed Conan running down the beach in a suit jacket and tie to the tune of Eye of The Tiger to indicate him loosening up for the move to LA.
• Done in an episode of Victorious with hamboning, of all things.
• Done in Step by Step when Cody was trying to train Mark in martial arts. Cody even began playing "Gonna Fly Now" in an attempt to motivate him.
• Inverted in Lucifer when Amenadiel has to pretend to be human for a cage fight, which means not using his superpowers. So we get a montage where his skills decrease as he struggles to hit a punching bag without sending it flying across the gym, lift weights while pretending to strain at the effort, and catch a chicken without using his time-stopping power.
• Danger 5: Tucker undergoes one to pick up some ninja skills from McKenzie, after being humiliated by 'Johnny Hitler'.
  Tucker: I killed this dog and harvested its owner's tears, just like you said.
  McKenzie: I never told you to do that!
• Odd Squad:
  • In "Agent Obfusco", the eponymous agent puts Olive and Otto through training as part of their Odd Squad test, which includes doing push-ups and sit-ups, reciting the name of every single agent working at the precinct, swimming a lap in the ball pit, and playing a game in the South Control Room which involves sticking a green pole into the correct hole in a control panel. They're also shown dancing with Obfusco while dressed in cowboy attire, moustaches and all. The entire montage is set to Obfusco's "I Am" Song.
  • "License to Science" has one as well that's just as silly and nonsensical. Half of it consists of Otis training Oona for her upcoming test at the Department of Motorized Gadgets. The other half...is Otis showing off his incredible dance moves. For the cherry on top, the song that accompanies it, dubbed "You'd Better (Better, Better, Better) Be Ready" by fans, is amazing and sounds like something straight out of The '80s.
  • The first part of the Season 2 finale, "Who is Agent Otis?", has one involving Oprah training Otis, a former villain, to shed his duck mannerisms and act more human in nature while also training him in the ways of being an Odd Squad agent. While he has a rocky start initially, he eventually gets the hang of things and is made a full-fledged Investigation agent.

Music

• Will Smith mentions one in DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince's song "I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson", where he claims he's jogging 10,000 miles a day, among other things.
• the Mountain Goats have a song titled, appropriately, "Training Montage". It's the opening track of the album Bleed Out, which is a Concept Album loosely themed around crime and action movies, and the lyrics describe a protagonist training to overcome the obstacles in their path, while also referencing genre tropes (such as a stereotypical swelling, orchestral soundtrack accompanying the montage).

Music Videos

• The music video for “Decided to Break It” by Marianas Trench has the band training for a sack race against their greatest foes, the notorious Spider Pirates.
• The music video for "Ni Tú Ni Nadie" by Moenia shows a woman getting into shape through stages from overweight to thin. She is shown exercising in her room, jogging, swimming, and attending dance lessons. She is very physically fit in the end but it was All Just a Dream.

Pro Wrestling

• Jim Cornette tried to put together a training montage for The Midnight Express to show how badly they were going to beat The Road Warriors in their upcoming scaffold match but only Big Bubba Rogers had the stones to actually move on the scaffold.
• In 1990, after the Ultimate Warrior won the WWF title, Bobby Heenan hosted one of Rick Rude training in preparation to challenge Warrior for the title. Rude had defeated Warrior a year earlier to become Intercontinental Champion, and vowed to beat him again.
• GLOW girl Susie Spirit did one, showing her training with tag team partner Debbie Debutante to get back in shape after dislocating her elbow in a match several months earlier.
• Vince McMahon had a hilarious training montage in 1999 when he was preparing to enter the Royal Rumble, being coached by his son Shane and being made to chase a chicken and drink raw eggs, among other things.
  • And another one in the summer of 2009, when he and D-Generation X teamed up to battle The Legacy. Triple H was holding a paddle up for Vince to punch when Carlito came into Vince's office and started complaining about something trivial. Hilariously, Triple H held the paddle in front of Carlito's face and then yanked it away at the last second, causing Carlito to get punched out!
• Carly's first attempt to fight Puerto Rican legend Ray González lead to him starring up at the ceiling, so something needed to be shown to convince people that when they got in the ring it would be worth seeing. That something was a training montage.
• IWA Puerto Rico Junior Heavyweight Champion Julio Franco had videos showing off his kick boxing and cardio training, which doubled as a free commercial for Tae Fit Gym.
• One commercial for the Fight2BeFitFacility consisted of various clips of Low Ki working out.
• Parodied in a two shorts for Family Fitness Center, both titled Bobby Lashley vs Boogeyman, where Lashley showed off all the equipment of the facility under the notion that he was training to show how unafraid of the Boogeyman he was. (It convinced no one, of him being unafraid. People did show up to workout) This was played straight when Lashley was TNA's World Heavyweight Champion and MVP was talking up Lashley's physical prowess while he worked out.
• Parodied when host of Caged Heat Radio's Reality Check, Jorge Alonso, decided to train at the Spot in Florida, in preparation for his revenge on La Rosa Negra (after she knocked him over and a passing fan mocked him for losing to a girl). Problem being La Rosa Negra is one of the Spot's trainers.
• Los Dioses del Olímpico (Apolo y Atlas) had several in the lead up to their match with Mr. Big and Noel Rodríguez at The World Wrestling League's Insurrection event in 2014.

Radio

• Parodied in Adventures in Odyssey's "Fifteen Minutes", where Alex trains to perfect his mini-golf skills under the ex-champion, Bart Rathbone. Somehow, despite the appropriate music (and a spot where he waxes Bart's car for no discernible purpose), this causes him to do much worse the second time around.

Video Games

• CLANNAD: Tomoya preparing for Ushio's school sports day.
• Creed: Rise to Glory has montages in classic Rocky style. "Training" is handled as a series of microgames that you aim to complete inside of a time limit while "Gonna Fly Now" plays in the background.
• In Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals, Larry attempts to get in shape on a series of exercise machines while a pastiche of "Gonna Fly Now" plays in the background.
• Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! features a memorable training sequence between circuits where Little Mac dons a pink tracksuit and runs behind Doc Louis riding a bike. This is expanded upon in the Wii version to create a full-on training montage.
• Little Mac does this again in the intro to his trailer for when he becomes playable in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. It concludes with him knocking a Sandbag out of the window of the gym.
• No More Heroes has a remix of "Eye of the Tiger" playing in the background in the gym.
• In Knights of the Old Republic, the series of clips demonstrating your Jedi training might count (though there isn't any music, just Master Zhar narrating).0
• DragonFable: Drakonan, a Pyromancer gets this, it consists of Bench pressing and runnning up a hill, neither of which really helps someone chuck fireballs at you
• World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria features three of these during a quest chain where the Player Character learns martial arts from the Hidden Master. The first montage is played straight, then the second plays it for laughs: as the Hidden Master throws eggs at the player to test their concentration, the giant bird they stole one of the eggs from comes to attack him from behind.
• In the Team Fortress 2 supplemental materials, Scout has had some luck with "tramps", but is ultimately hopeless when it comes to "ladies", like the team's secretary/assistant/cleaner Miss Pauling, a woman who reads and always has her glasses on a little crooked. All of his attempts to woo her are either ultimately shut down, or end in awkward stammering. In the 15-minute short Expiration Date, he eventually comes to Spy, admitting that Spy's better with women than he is. Spy attempts to educate Scout on the art of seduction, dinner, dancing, etc., but Scout doesn't seem to get it. Ultimately, it seems to have been a test of Scout's will, as he finally impresses Spy by just showing Pauling he cares for her, looking out for her, and asking her out upfront. He ultimately doesn't get the girl, but it seems to be mostly because their boss gives her zero time off.
• Rex, in classic 80s action movie fashion, goes through one of these in Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon past the first Point of No Return in order to learn to control the Killstar and get up to fighting form in order to take on Big Bad Sloan.
• Rhythm Heaven:
  • The Blue Birds stages in Rhythm Heaven for the DS feature the birds flashing back to going through Training from Hell with their sergeant.
  • The Figure Fighter stages in Fever play out in this way, as the stages are about a Living Toy practicing on a punching bag. True to the series, just because he's simply training doesn't mean it can't be challenging, especially the second stage near the end of the game.
• Minecraft: Story Mode: At the beginning of the first episode, after deciding on what to build; it introduces the main quick time events as well as parodying the trope through having Jesse do things a normal Minecraft player would do within a typical gameplay session (such as punching trees).
• Monster Hunter: Stories: Brachydios' Kinship Attack will start by showing a flashbacl training animation of Brachydios doing many things such as boxing, moving a cart and jogging before delivering the strike.
• Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time has a playable version of this as Murray helps train Caveman "Bob" Cooper get into shape all to a "movie training montage" homage tune.
• Super Mario Galaxy 2 appears to invoke this trope with the background music from ''Melty Monster Galaxy", due to its very Mulan-like tune evoking the preparation for a war (as it is the first galaxy in the final world before the final boss battle against Bowser).

Web Animation

• Bowser's Kingdom Episode 7 had one of these, but it was cut out because of lazy animators. Hal and Jeff have an Oh, Crap! reaction when they find out and come to the conclusion that they didn't train at all.
• In The Gentleman Pirate, after Stede has been screwed over one too many times, he asks his quartermaster to help him become a better pirate, leading to one of these. The song that plays was supposed to have lyrics but ended up being cut in favor of the instrumental.
• Two in Homestar Runner:
  • In the Strong Bad Email "montage", Strong Bad is asked to "creat a montage". The third one he creates has the subject, a Wagon Fulla Pancakes, training for the championship.
    Guts, guts and might
    Liftin' weights and feelin' alright
    It's a showdown, goin' downtown you're gonna mess around
    Showdown, put your nose down, showdown!
  • The "Showdown" music (without Strong Bad's vocals) is reprised with Homestar's training montage for the animated version of "Strongest Man in the World".
• La Golda: The kids have one with Juanito the morning after he challenges Ms. Ricca to a soccer match.
• In RWBY Chibi, there was a workout montage where Yang is trying to get fit, complete with a remix of "I Burn" to the tune of "Eye of the Tiger'.
• Starscream has Megatron pass for one in a Transformers Kre-O short.

Webcomics

• Played straight in M9 Girls!: we get a gym training sequence with a page devoted to each Girl showcasing her cosmic power.
• Subverted, parodied and invoked in this Order of the Stick strip.
  Elan: How come we've only been doing this for twenty minutes, but you've already changed the backdrop five times and gone through three costumes?
  Julio: Elan, never underestimate the strategic value of a good Training Scene Montage. It could save your life one day. Though I guess maybe I should actually teach you some of these things...
• Collar 6 used this for a time skip to the spanking contest.
• Invoked in Ansem Retort, when Axel is about to begin training for a Murder-off.
  Aerith: So you've got a week to train for this. Montage?
  Axel: Montage.
  • The next strip is a montage of Axel training, complete with The Eye of the Tiger in the background.
  Riku: Oh thank God, that song lasted all week.
  Namine: Yeah, sorry about that, I downloaded the 'Super Montage' edition.
• Five Color Control uses it in a direct Shout-Out to Rocky in this strip, where Gideon Jura trains in preparation for his upcoming appearance in the Magic 2012 Core Set.
• Chapter 25 and half of Chapter 26 of Furry Fight Chronicles has Muko finally starting her Combagal training with Cookie monitoring her progress.
• Downplayed in Ears for Elves when Luero is describing what Guardianship training will be like for Tanna. One panel on that page has a few doodles of a miniature Tanna training and learning archery, as well as serving and obeying her superiors — specifically Luero himself, much to his great glee.
• The official Wonder Momo webcomic had the narration lampshade this when the title character was being trained by her mother, the original Wonder Momo.
  Since this is a comic, you'll have to imagine inspiring music playing over this training montage, but trust us, it's awesome.
• Sluggy Freelance: In "Torg Potter and the Giblets with Fiber", Torg is supposed to compete in a magical tournament, but unknown to most people he's actually got no magic skills. Homogenize Milktoast thinks they might be able to train him and casts a "montahjio cinematicus" spell to show a quick montage (ironically, not shown in the comic) of the training and skip straight to the result. The comic skips to Torg being a Bandage Mummy.
• In Errant Story, Sara's backstory is presented this way as she builds up to her "graduation" mission — of assassinating her brother. Accurately described as a "Training from Hell montage."
• Mob Psycho 100 parodies this with an appropriately labeled Hardcore Training Montage, showing Mob preparing for a five-minute student council president campaign speech with a series of increasingly ridiculous and irrelevant training exercises such as Meditating Under a Waterfall and sumo-wrestling wild bears.
• Sleepless Domain: When Undine first joins the Magical Girl Power Training Club, we see a brief montage of her excercising with the rest of the club... before she promptly collapses on the ground, frustrated with her lack of progress.
• Sailor Ranko: Several weeks of Ranma training Akane to fight their way to the portal, while they are stranded in another world.

Web Original

• The Agony Booth: Mr. Mendo prepped for his review of the second Atlas Shrugged film by working out, hardening his skin over the oven, drawing guns, and... playing Bioshock...

Web Videos

• Dragon Ball Z Abridged has a montage in the year before the fight with Vegeta and Nappa set to a parody of "I'll Make a Man Out of You". It's also Parodied when Goku decides to train using his spaceship's artificial gravity chamber on his way to Namek while listening to training montage style music as many people do in Real Life. After turning down the obvious ones like "Gonna Fly Now," "Live To Win" and "Montage," he settles on "Cooking By The Book". The audience is mercifully spared the montage.
• Street Fighter: The Later Years has one in episode 5, where the fighters are training their powers before the tournament.
• The Wiiviewer likes to do these with some of his favorite 80s songs.
• Atop the Fourth Wall: Linkara attempts one in preparation for reading Amazons Attack! It doesn't work.
• The Angry Video Game Nerd was determined to finally beat Ninja Gaiden after twenty years of trying. After seeking the help of a real ninja and going through a training montage, he ended up getting close, but still failing.
• A montage of training montages.
• Redacted Smp: Povertybag gives Debunky a training montage at one point, which is filled with useful Minecraft pvp tips, such as running just to the left or right of your enemy, jumping then turning and hitting them in the air or using crossbows and shields.

Western Animation

• Blue Eye Samurai. In the first episode, a young Mizu trains how to use a sword to the (anachronistic) theme from Battles Without Honor and Humanity.
• In The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! episode "The Fire of Hercufleas," the out-of-shape former hero Hercufleas must get back into fighitng shape to battle King Koopa, and thus has a training montage.
• In The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 episode "Tag Team Trouble," Toad convinces Mario and Luigi to enter a wrestling match against the sledge brothers. Prior to the match, we get a training montage where the Mario brothers prepare for their match.
• Parodied in the Big City Greens episode "Montaged." When Cricket wants to train to become a sheep rodeo rider, Remy tells him about how movies use training montages to make a character get good at something. Cricket then tries to exploit this by doing a montage of his own, which ends in him… rapidly trying to rush through all of the segments without putting any effort into any of them. When he tries to ride the sheep, he fails and tries to do another montage, only this time, it actually works. However, once it's done, the montage resets itself, and then the episode is all about Cricket trying to get out of it, getting himself into more montages as the episode progresses. Thankfully, it was All Just a Dream.
• Done twice in Captain N: The Game Master. First, in the episode "Videolympics", where the N Team prepares for the titular Videolympics. This is done a second time in "The Trouble with Tetris," where Lyle undergoes one of these as part of training to learn everything he needs to be a proper prince.
• Spoofed in Drawn Together in the episode "Spelling Applebee's", when Foxxy was training for a Spelling Bee. After asking if they could use the "Rocky song", the reply she received was "only... if we can afford it." The scene then cut to Foxxy punching a punching bag to the beat of a barely-audible, poorly-rendered version of "Gonna Fly Now". The training sequence was then abandoned altogether as "it doesn't work without the real song."
• DuckTales (2017): In "The Phantom and the Sorceress!", Lena gets one of these in using her magic from Magica DeSpell. It also features Gladstone being a Butt-Monkey, thanks to the Phantom Blot stealing his supernaturally good luck.
• Parodied, steps and all, in Hey Arnold! in the episode "Old Iron Man", where Arnold's grandpa competes against an old rival in a senior athletic competition.
• Inverted in the Daffy Duck cartoon, "Holiday for Drumsticks". To "save" Tom, a turkey destined for Thanksgiving dinner, Daffy coaches him through an exercise regimen to help him lose weight — while packing away all the food (and the pounds) the farmers have set out to fatten him up. The training montage is on a split screen, with Tom working himself rail-thin in one half, and Daffy stuffing his beak in the other, with the opposite effect on his physique. In the end, Daffy is the one threatened with ending up on the dinner table.
  Daffy: Yeah, it's too bad you can't have duck for Thanksgiving... (sees the maniacal grin on the farmer's face, and gives a Loud Gulp) Or can ya?
• South Park:
  • Spoofed in the World of Warcraft episode, when the boys are training their characters up to defeat the Internet Troll who has been ruining the game for everyone; whilst the in-game shots shows their characters gradually improving, as they are are spending all their time eating junk food in front of computers the out-game shots of the montage show the boys gradually getting fatter, spottier and further out of shape over time.
  • The song that plays in the background during this scene is "Live to Win" by Paul Stanley, one of the members of KISS. Funnily enough, the episode with the song was released before Paul's album.
  • Also brilliantly spoofed/lampshaded in "Asspen", and then in an identical fashion in the movie Team America: World Police: textbook-perfect training montages are accompanied by the song 'Montage,' which helpfully notes that "In anything, if you want to go / From just a beginner to a pro / You need a montage." This is also something of a subversion because Stan still skis like a beginner after the montage.
  • And then there is the episode "The Losing Edge" where Randy goes through a training montage training to beat the other fathers at Stan's baseball games set to the song You're The Best Around. He even sings it in a high-pitched voice when he's fighting the father he's been training the hardest against. Sort of. "You're the best...Around! Yamma-damma-damma-damma-hey!"
  • In "Up the Down Steroid", Cartman trains himself to fake mental retardation so he can get into the Special Olympics (he figures he can easily beat the others since they are mentally handicapped and he is not; he's wrong) to the tune of Paul Engemann's "Push It to the Limit" from Scarface.
• In Gravity Falls episode "Dipper Vs Manliness", we have a twofer; a montage that mixes Dipper manliness training under the manotaurs with Mabel's attempts to make Grunkle Stan more charming and attractive. Actually lampshaded by Mabel; "This is going to take some really good training music" (Takes out a CD labeled 'Training Mix')
  Never lose sight of the sights you see
  You gotta believe your beliefs are real
  Now you're drinking from a fire hydrant
  Teach your uncle how to wear a cummerbund
  Now you're gonna jump a crazy gorge
  Keep on shaving that hairy uncle
  Uh, I don't really know what's happening in this part
  Your heart's on fire and the fire is in your heart!
• Family Guy did this in an episode, showing Brian getting ready for college finals by training on top of a mountain (explicitly spoofing the Hearts On Fire sequence from Rocky IV). Which did nothing to help him study, as he and Stewie note a few seconds later.
  • They did the joke again in Something, Something, Something, Dark Side, their parody of The Empire Strikes Back, with Luke Skywalker/Chris playing the part of Rocky whilst Yoda takes Paulie's role in the other training montage from Rocky IV, complete with cutting to the footage of Ivan Drago training from the movie. At the end of the montage Luke/Chris points out that "it kinda seems like the Dark Side has a better gym than us."
• Chowder tears this one apart with a montage set to a song in which the last verse is just the word "Best" repeated over and over.
• The Venture Brothers - Brock's secret agent license is expired, and Hank helps him train for the test in an inspiring montage, complete with cheesy '80s song penned by Doc Hammer.
• Home Movies - Brendon Small struggles to improve his grades, with the help of a pump-up song "Trust Yourself", by the real Brendon Small.
• When Rusty on Squidbillies was training to become a professional wrestler, he had one of these, complete with heroic Background Music.. only instead of training he was being injected with steroids and the scenes all had him standing in the same place, slightly more muscular each time.
• Used several times in The Simpsons.
  • In "Simpsons Bible Stories", Bart (King David) trains with a flock of sheep in preparation for his battle with Nelson (Goliath II). "Bart the General" features a Training the Peaceful Villagers montage as Bart's army prepares to fight the bullies.
  • In the parody vignette "Bartman Begins," Bart Simpson trains to become Bartman after his parents are murdered by Snake (who appears first as a common hood in the Joe Chill mold and later as a reptile-themed supervillain), and he does so in an "old-timey montage" on grainy film that looks like something from between the 1890s and the 1940s. (Apparently, someone forgot to tell the animators that Batman Begins, despite being set during a "depression," is supposed to be taking place in the modern day.)
  • Subverted in "Homer The Whopper", where his trainer wants to do a montage to "Eye of the Tiger". Homer protests "Aww, that song is a little on the nose. Can we do it to David Bowie's "Heroes?"" Eventually, they decide to just skip ahead a month.
• One occurs in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Call of the Cutie'', when Rainbow Dash coaches Apple Bloom in a number of different activities, all in the hopes of helping her find the thing that will become her life calling and cause her cutie mark to appear.
  • Fluttershy gets on in "Hurricane Fluttershy" where her animal friends help her learn to be a stronger flier. Making it a literal example of the old name, "Gonna Fly Now Montage".''' but uses some original BGM.
• Doom gets one in The Super Hero Squad Show after a fractal-powered MODOK takes over the Legion. Complete with running up a lot of steps.
• Angelica Pickles of Rugrats goes through one in order to prove that she is the best in the summer camp she got shanghaied into.
• American Dad! did this when Stan helped Roger to graduate police academy.
• Robot Chicken introduces Mon-tage, who has this as his superpower, solving problems by invoking these to learn skills or accomplish tasks instantly. He even weaponizes it directly near the end, invoking a montage to rapidly age an escaping thief into infirmity.
• Phineas and Ferb spoofed this twice, first in "Raging Bully" and then again in "Doof Dynasty".
  ''You're gonna run up a ramp with two buckets of water,
  Swing over mud for some reason!
  At some point you'll drop to your knees while its raining, and look up into the skkkyyy!
  You'll stand on a post with your arms out!
  ....these flowers are way out of season!
  You'll fly to a swamp planet, meet a little green man,
  And move things with your miiiinnndd!''
• Samurai Jack has this in spades. The pilot has is the Boot Camp Episode, with Jack living with a buttload of characters. The "Jack learns to Jump Good" episode has two of them back-to-back; first Jack teaches a tribe of apes how to set traps and defend themselves from a rival tribe, and then they teach him how to "jump good" by weighing him down with stones and have him run and jump all around the jungle.
• There's one in The Smurfs (1981) episode "Supersmurf", as Brainy tries to make himself strong through exercise before he tires himself out.
• Subverted in the Christmas episode of The Cleveland Show. Donna is trying to train Cleveland to finally beat his father at their annual holiday boxing match. She then presses play on a boombox and the first few notes of "Eye of the Tiger" start playing. Then the screen cuts to "Montage Cut Due To Familiarity" and it skips to the next scene.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Used in part of the episode "Bitter Work", as Toph is teaching Aang how to earthbend.
• In Rick and Morty, after Summer gets screwed over by her boss, she and Rick proceed to have a montage of them pumping iron and taking steroids set to "X Gon' Give It To Ya" by DMX before going on stage and beating the shit out of him.
  • After the credits, it's followed by a montage of totally-jacked Rick and Summer beating the crap out of various assholes in society.
• In a "Goodfeathers" episode of Animaniacs Bobbi is seen doing this as he prepares for a fight, culminating in him running up the steps and throwing his hands in the air...and getting stepped on by Rocky.
• Lampshaded to hell and back in the Regular Show episode "No Train No Gain". Real-time Training Montages appear as a form of time compression, with Pops and his tutor teleporting around the park like scene transitions as Pops perform tasks as Chinese-style music plays throughout the park. Eventually Mordecai and Rigby have had enough with the music, and the montage scenes are interrupting their daily life. So they change the music to a song that's several minutes longer and notably faster, "Through the Fire and the Flames" by Dragonforce. It works, but the montage goes haywire as Pops' training brings him to Physical God levels, eventually ending up in a void with Pops performing multiple tasks at once in splitscreen, and other characters appearing as half-visible overlays.
• Stōked: "Dirty Little Secret, Nerdy Little Secrets" opens with Fin's undergoing a training montage as she prepares for Gromfest.
• VivaPinata: In "Mr. Unbustable", Fergy Fudgehog takes part in a training regimen created by Meinhardt Mousemallow, and a training montage is played where Fergy ends up becoming incredibly bulky and impervious to damage.
• Parodied in the Ready Jet Go! episode "My Fair Jet", Jet goes through a training montage while training to behave like a regular human child. Complete with rock music playing in the background, until Sean tells him to stop that.
  • A variation occurs throughout "Pet Sounds", with the kids trying to train Cody to do tricks, but with the show's regular quirky music instead of rock music.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: In "Gar Trains Punching Judy", Punching Judy gets a training montage from Mr. Gar, but when she asks for a pep talk Gar just makes her do the montage over again two more times. At the climax of the cartoon, K.O. and Judy give Mr. Gar an "emotional training montage" to get him to open up enough to give a Rousing Speech.
• The Owl House: Discussed and parodied in "Wing It Like Witches"; Luz explains that "every great sports story has to have a training montage". She then has to go through a montage explaining a montage to Gus and Willow, which inexplicably includes a scene of them having tea in animal costumes.
  Gus: Wait, were we just having a tea party in animal jammies?
  Luz: What happens in the montage stays in the montage!
• Steven Universe: Pearl trains Connie how to be a knight and the ways of the sword during the song "Do It for Her" in the season two episode "Sworn to the Sword".
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • "The Great Snail Race": Once SpongeBob manages to get Gary to train for the snail race, we see a montage of the exercises Gary have to do. By the end of the montage, it's next day and SpongeBob is still training an obviously exhausted Gary.
  • In "Mrs. Puff You're Fired", Sergeant Roderick insists that SpongeBob must practice crawling, walking, and running through an obstacle course before he can be deemed fit to drive. Cue a montage of said practice.
  • "License to Milkshake" gives this treatment to learning to make milkshake. Granted, the learning method is rather over-the-top and montage-worthy. And SpongeBob fails in all of them.
• Molly of Denali: In "Molly and the Great One," Molly and Tooey engage in a training sequence in order to convince their parents they're ready to climb Denali.
• The Amazing World of Gumball episode "The Slap" has one of these, complete with Gumball and Tobias singing about how to stay alive while Mulan-like music plays in the background.

Real Life

• Not exactly a montage since you can't exactly skip through things, but many people do listen to training montage style music to pump them up while they are training or exercising.

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Always fade out in a montage...
If you fade out it feels like more time has passed in a montage...

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