TITLE:
Pre-Game Music and Its Effect on Athletes
AUTHORS:
Mathew Furer, Nicole Pollino
KEYWORDS:
Pre-Game, Music, Performance, Maximize Capabilities, Psychological, Physical, Sports, Mental, Athletes, Professionals
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.14 No.10,
October
29,
2026
ABSTRACT: This study examined whether listening to music before a brief maximal-effort task is associated with self-reported energy, focus, and sprint performance among high school athletes, and gathered comparative survey data from college and professional athletes. Participants included 150 high school athletes (93 male, 57 female) who completed an online survey on pre-game listening habits and genre preference; a subset of 20 high school athletes who completed a four-day physical experiment consisting of a 30-second maximal-effort run under four fixed conditions, presented in the same order for every participant (Day 1: an assigned individual song classified as rap, “One Dance” by Drake; Day 2: a second assigned individual song, “Timeless” by The Weeknd and Playboi Carti; Day 3: a self-selected song; Day 4: no music); and 26 college or professional athletes who completed a parallel survey. Primary measures were self-reported energy or focus, self-reported song or genre preference, and 30-second running distance. A large majority of respondents in both surveys reported listening to music before competition and associated it with feeling more energized or focused, and self-reported energy was lower on the no-music day than on the music days. Because the no-music condition always occurred last and the two individual-song conditions used a single song each, effects of order, fatigue, practice, and expectation cannot be separated from the effect of music itself, and genre cannot be isolated from other song-specific features. Findings therefore support a general association between pre-competition music and self-reported readiness but do not support conclusions about which genre, or personal preference specifically, produces the largest benefit.