issue 229

May 2026

The music blasting through the arena speakers before a fight may be doing far more than entertaining the crowd, and Ray Klerck looks at the science showing that your playlist could influence your fight performance.

Some walk out to gangster rap or sounds that seem like they were forged in a volcano by shirtless Vikings with neck tattoos. Alex Pereira gave us chills with Sepultura’s Ratamahatta. Conor McGregor’s haunting mix of The Foggy Dew transitioning into Hypnotize. Music is a psychological primer. But the weird part is that science now suggests these songs may not just be branding or entertainment. They may actually alter the mindset of the fighter underneath the hoodie. Researchers are finding that music can influence many of the moving parts that a fighter needs to win, which means the wrong walkout song might be as useful as bringing a flute to a knife fight. These legendary soundtracks do more than entertain the crowd. They serve as a neurochemical trigger for the athlete. When a fighter hears those first familiar notes, they aren't just walking; they are anchoring their mind to a state of peak readiness. Here’s why the right track can be the difference between hitting the right note or hitting the canvas. 

LISTEN UP

You already know that music and exercise go together like beards and butter. If you’re in any doubt, there’s plenty of science to change your mind. Compared to exercising in silence, cyclists were able to keep pedaling for up to 20% longerwhen they could choose the tracks they listened to. This meant they could ride for six additional minutes before reaching exhaustion, as it helped them tolerate sustained effort longer. All of those results assume you’re in good nick mentally. If you aren’t and have a whiff of mental fatigue, music can act like a pre-workout, giving you the oomph you need to keep trucking. When runners selected their own tracks but felt their brains were frazzled, the music pulled them out of the funk and improved their performance. So, if it clearly works for the endurance junkies, what about getting stronger? Yep, it’ll do that too. People with more than 2 years of strength training experience who listened to their favorite music increased their strength endurance when lifting 75% of their one-rep max, and the exercises felt easier. That said, it didn’t increase their one-rep max, so it’s not going to help you suddenly hulk out, but it will make a difference to how energized you feel for training. Most sports have quietly weaponized music for years. Rugby teams use pounding anthems to increase collective aggression before kick-off. Even tennis players have routines built around calming or activating playlists depending on whether they need to stay composed or mentally explode. Your brain loves rhythm because it shortcuts emotion, sending it straight into the nervous system without asking permission. Fighters may think they’re choosing songs because they sound cool, but their brains might actually be choosing chemical states. The playlist becomes part therapist, part performance enhancer, and part emotional flamethrower.

THE SONG IS PART OF THE GAMEPLAN

When researchers finally turned their attention toward combat athletes, things got even more interesting. A March 2026 study examined fighters and found that motivational music can significantly improve emotional arousal, confidence, focus, and tolerance for discomfort before competition. Faster songs with heavier beats consistently increased aggression and readiness levels, while those familiar tracks an athlete has had on repeat helped to stabilize confidence and reduce anxiety before competition. It works because the brain starts associating certain songs with specific emotional states. Hear the song enough times before hard sparring or victories, and eventually your nervous system treats it like a switch being flicked. Athletes who listened to self-selected motivational music improved their repeated-sprint performance by nearly 5%, which is massive when fights can hinge on a single exchange. Music can lower the perception of fatigue and pain during high-intensity effort. This means fighters may physically feel fresher even as they drown in lactic acid and regret. Across the board, being in charge of the playlist always wins over randomly assigned tracks because that emotional connection mattered more than background noise, so don’t skimp on that Spotify subscription. That explains why fighters protect their walkout songs like ancient family heirlooms. This is neurological priming disguised as entertainment. A fighter walking out to DMX barking through arena speakers may genuinely enter the fight feeling more aggressive and switched on than the same athlete walking out to Coldplay and sounding like he’s about to apologize to the referee. We already know that, and it’s why fighters are allowed to show that aspect of their personality and choose their walkout music. 

SOUND THERAPY

So how does this all work? Music is merely organized sound, and there’s little doubt that it has a massive impact on your athletic performance, plus when the sweat has stopped flowing, it can also be used to chill you out. What’s important to realize is that whether it’s plants, cells, or last night’s dinner, everything has a frequency and sound. You just can’t hear it all, which means you could be short-changing your fight game by ignoring its influence on you. Sound is energy created by vibrations that cause air particles to bump into one another, creating a sound wave – much like the ripples of a pebble thrown into a pond. To gauge how sound can create real-world results, music is the place to start because one paper analyzed 21 studies on music therapy and discovered that tunes have the ability to improve social function in schizophrenia sufferers, improve gait in Parkinson’s sufferers, alleviate depression symptoms, and help people improve both the quality and length of their sleep. The vibrations from vibroacoustic sound therapy actually change the behavior of our cells. The list of aural benefits appears to be near endless, and music is just one incarnation sound can take. While these applications do sound like sick care, you can apply them as a form of health care to make improvements to your performance and mental outlook.

SOUNDING OFF YOUR AESTHETICS

Take the example of the noisiest lifters and hitters in your gym, you probably wish someone would ask him if a rag smelled like chloroform, but he could be onto something. Grunting when playing a sport like tennis increases groundstroke velocity by 3.8%, so you can imagine that the same rules apply when you’re hitting the bag. It seems being quiet costs you power. What you listen to after your training session can have the biggest impact on your recovery. Researchers got people to train to exhaustion, then gave them either upbeat or slow, sedative music to listen to while they recovered between bouts of exercise. It’s probably no surprise that the slower beats were associated with lower cortisol levels and an improved emotional state, which helped them reflect on their workout in a more positive light. To tap into this, simply set your music to a chill genre when you’re not training, but you can even kick it up a notch by searching for healing frequencies on YouTube and listening to them before bed or post-workout. Whether or not they do what they say on the tin can be decided by your own experience because different people will be affected to varying degrees, in equal parts good and bad. Even if you’re not always aware of it, noise pollution exacts a heavy toll on your body. Noise, particularly during sleep, can negatively impact your heart health, and it’s been cited as a risk factor for heart disease and coronary artery disease. It suggests that this noise subconsciously triggers stress hormones that chip away at your heart’s resilience. The city-specific barrage we’re bombarded with is not what we’ve evolved to deal with just yet.

THE RIGHT SONG MIGHT BE INSIDE YOU

At this point, it’s hard to argue that music is just background noise. Fighters spend thousands on nutritionists, recovery tools, saunas, supplements, and sleep trackers, yet many completely overlook the thing blasting directly into their nervous system before they step onto the competitive space. Your walkout track is not just a vibe. It’s a trigger. A neurological shortcut that can alter your confidence, aggression, and tolerance for suffering. Build playlists intentionally around the emotional state you want. Use heavier, faster tracks before hard sparring or explosive sessions. Use slower music to recover, lower stress, and sleep better after training. Most importantly, repeat the same songs during successful training sessions so your brain begins associating them with confidence, composure, and readiness. Over time, your playlist becomes less like entertainment and more like psychological conditioning. Somewhere between the bassline, the adrenaline, and the bad intentions, your nervous system starts learning exactly who it needs to become when the lights come on.