The Effect of Post-Exercise Music Listening on Competitive Anxiety and Sleep Quality in Elite Athletes

Abstract

Background: Competitive anxiety and inadequate sleep can impair recovery and psychological readiness in elite athletes. Listening to music after exercise may provide a low-cost recovery strategy. Objectives: This study investigated whether an 8-week post-exercise music-listening program was associated with changes in cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety, self-confidence, and subjective sleep quality in elite athletes. Methods: Forty elite male athletes were equally allocated to the music and control groups. The music group listened to preferred music for 60 minutes after training, three times per week for 8 weeks. Competitive anxiety was assessed using the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2), and subjective sleep quality was assessed using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Separate analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) compared posttest outcomes between groups while controlling for the corresponding pretest scores. Results: Significant adjusted between-group differences were observed for cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety, self-confidence, and subjective sleep quality. Compared with the control group, the music group showed greater reductions in cognitive anxiety, greater increases in self-confidence, and greater improvements in subjective sleep quality. Although somatic anxiety decreased in both groups, the unadjusted posttest mean was slightly lower in the control group; therefore, the direction of the adjusted between-group difference in somatic anxiety was not interpreted. Conclusions: An 8-week post-exercise preferred-music listening program was associated with greater reductions in cognitive anxiety, greater increases in self-confidence, and improved subjective sleep quality compared with the control condition. Although a significant adjusted between-group difference was observed for somatic anxiety, its direction was not interpreted. These findings suggest that post-exercise music listening may be a feasible complementary recovery strategy; however, causal inference and generalizability are limited by the study design.