Lots goes into racing fast at swim meets.
Months of hard work, navigating the roller coaster of tapering, and of course—picking just the right playlist to get you amped up and dialed in during those tense moments before racing.
Music does a lot of things for us before racing—from distraction to motivation. But how much does it actually impact how fast we swim?
According to one study—it can impact swimming performance quite a bit.
Pre-Swimming Music Boosts Performance
A study (Smirmaul et al., 2014) published in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness recruited a group of 18 adult recreational swimmers.
Swimmers did a 200m freestyle all out on two separate days, doing the same warm-up, but after warming up either:
- Listened to five minutes of self-selected music
- Sat quietly for five minutes
One minute later, they got up on the blocks, and off they went to do their 200m free.
The big finding?
After listening to music, they went 1.44% faster compared to the silent condition. And out of the 18 swimmers, 14 went faster with music.
This lines up with a recent meta-analysis (Delleli et al., 2023) showing showed that pre-exercise music produced small but real improvement in performances, including increased power output and faster exercise-test times.
So listening to music before we race looks to have a solid impact on swim performance. But why?
Why Does Listening to Music Before Swimming Boost Performance?
We already know that listening to music while swimming has some serious benefits, including:
- Increased swimming endurance
- Increased stroke tempo and holding it for longer
- Reduced rate of perceived effort
- Faster sprint swimming performances (Tate et al., 2012)
And with waterproof headphones making it possible to bring music to swim training, swimmers can ride those benefits to smarter workouts.
But the power of listening to music before swimming isn’t as clear.
After all, once we get up on the block, and the headphones are off, it’s radio silence, our thoughts, our breathing, and that tense quiet waiting for the starter’s signal.
In this study, the big difference maker was pure motivation. Five minutes of music boosted motivation scores from 7.00 to 8.06 out of 10.
Interestingly, arousal was not meaningfully different—swimmers didn’t report necessarily being more hyped-up—but they were more motivated to push things in the water.
This lands within the concept of exercise tolerance, where greater motivation naturally leads swimmers to put forth more effort and tolerate more discomfort in the water.
The cool part is that they didn’t “feel” more of an effort—despite swimming faster with music, perceived exertion after the 200m free was the same music or no music.
How to Use Music Before Racing
This study was about as simple as it gets in terms of programming. Swimmers didn’t listen to an hour of music, and they weren’t force-fed a playlist based on beats-per-minute.
The swimmers just picked out five minutes of music for themselves and then got after it. Songs mostly landed in the dance, rock and pop categories, averaging just under 120 beats per minute.
Does that mean you should go crush a playlist of 120bpm songs every time you race? Not necessarily—swimmers picked songs that they personally felt appropriate for swimming faster.
Which I think is the biggest takeaway for swimmers looking to use music pre-performance.
Instead of obsessing over beats-per-minute or tempos or music genres, just stick with your usual list of bangers that make you feel motivated and read to compete, and add it to your pre-race routine.
A simple plan could look like this:
- Pool warm-up
- Get changed into your tech suit
- Talk to coach about race strategy, cues, etc.
- Head down near the blocks ten minutes before your race
- Crank out a couple of your go-to motivational songs
- Race like your Speedo is on fire!
It’s inexpensive, super easy to individualize, and doesn’t require tinkering with your physical warm-up.
The Bottom Line
Listening to music before racing isn’t going to magically turn us into Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky (although they were certainly fans of listening to music right up until they got behind the blocks).
But like most other things on race day, including block out distractions, warming up properly, and keeping your mind right, it’s a way to squeeze the best performance out of all the preparation you’ve put down in the pool.
For swimmers looking for a simple way to get mentally switched on as the pressure goes up, pressing play on a couple motivational songs may just be the ticket for faster swimming.
