Music to Move You: Comparing Effects of Music Genre on Subjective Performance of Football Players in a Practice Setting

Philadelphia, PA

Introduction

Optimizing athletic performance has increasingly expanded beyond traditional physical conditioning to include psychological, health-related, and environmental interventions aimed at improving both mental and physical readiness. However, many advanced performance enhancement strategies, such as specialized recovery technologies, individualized sport psychology services, and sophisticated monitoring systems, are not accessible to all athletic programs due to cost, infrastructure, or staffing limitations. As a result, there is a growing need for practical, low-cost, and ethically sound methods that can be implemented easily within everyday training environments. Music represents a potentially valuable yet underutilized tool in applied sport settings. Prior research suggests that music can influence motivation, arousal regulation, attentional focus, and perceived exertion, but much of this literature has focused on controlled laboratory environments or weight-room performance. Consequently, relatively little is known about how music influences athletes during actual team practice contexts, particularly across different musical genres.

Method

This study investigated the effects of music on collegiate football players during practice sessions, with particular emphasis on its capacity to enhance subjective performance, motivation, and positive mood while lowering perceived exertion. Addressing a gap in the literature, the study compared five practice conditions: rap, electronic dance music (EDM), alternative, classical, and a no-music control condition. Athletes participated in practices conducted under each condition, after which they completed psychological and performance-related measures assessing subjective performance, affective state, motivation, perceived competence, effort, and ratings of perceived exertion. Additionally, players rated their enjoyment of each genre, allowing for the examination of relationships between music preference and psychological outcomes.

Results

Results indicated that practicing with music regardless of genre was consistently associated with more favorable outcomes compared to practicing without music. The no-music condition produced the lowest scores across multiple measures of motivation, effort, and subjective performance, and was also associated with larger increases in negative affect and decreases in positive affect. Preferred music genres were generally linked with higher motivation and perceived performance, though these relationships were not strictly linear. Rap and alternative music emerged as the most cumulatively beneficial genres across dependent variables, with alternative music producing the strongest improvements in positive mood and performance ratings. Rap music demonstrated particularly strong effects on interest, engagement, and perceived competence while also reducing perceived pressure. EDM produced high levels of arousal and effort and was associated with strong performance ratings; however, it also corresponded with higher perceived exertion and fatigue relative to other genres.

Discussion

These findings highlight the nuanced interplay between tempo, emotional resonance, personal preference, and contextual factors such as training phase and fatigue. Rather than identifying a single optimal genre, the results suggest that different types of music may serve distinct psychological and performance-related functions within athletic training environments. Overall, this study positions music as a practical, accessible, and flexible supplement to existing performance enhancement strategies while underscoring the importance of individualized and psychologically informed approaches to optimizing athlete motivation, affect, and training engagement.