Rocky Balboa can inspire even the littlest among us

First off, it should be admitted up front that Bill Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now (Theme From Rocky)” is an almost embarrassingly cathartic piece of music, a melody and rhythm that makes it nigh impossible to resist throwing a few air punches and jogging around whatever room you’re in. (Pray you never hear it during a conference meeting at work.) But Rocky is plenty inspirational even without that particular piece of music—the training montages from almost every installment in the series are a thing of joy, even as they steadily progress from the pure hunger of the first one to the over-the-top cheese of Rocky IV. (Not to be confused with the over-the-top cheese of Over The Top.) These workout sequences are enough to get anyone pumped up.