21 | recondition the conditions

Professor Adam Nicholls recently highlighted University of Oregon head football coach Dan Lanning for using House of Pain’s JUMP AROUND as a cue for players to shift their mindset.

Wisconsin, the team Oregon was preparing to play, uses JUMP AROUND as a hype song in their stadium, playing it prior to the 4th quarter to energize the crowd and rally the roster to finish strong. But Lanning turned the intended effect on its head by using it ahead of the contest and coupling an entirely different set of intentions with the song. According to Nicholls, Lanning wanted his players to associate the song with a mental reset, relaxation, and enjoyment. In short, Lanning knew the conditions that his players would face and worked to re-condition their response ahead of the game.

Lanning’s decision made me think about other ways coaches could use the music of the opponent to their advantage. There are numerous examples of songs connected to certain football programs, so I don’t see any reason why you should settle for whatever the University of Tennessee wants you feel upon hearing ROCKY TOP for the 276th time during a conference matchup. And why should ‘not backing down’ be the exclusive mindset property of the University of Florida? And those are just examples from American football. Turning to baseball, I think of both the entrance song for pitchers and the walk-up music for hitters. ENTER SANDMAN was supposed to inspire an attitude of certain defeat for hitters about to face Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera, but what if you had spent the week prior watching video highlights of Rivera blowing saves to that song? Or yourself mashing to the tune? And on the pitching side, what if you had prepped for a series by watching players striking out to their walk-up songs? The Pitching Ninja has built an empire on delivering real-time examples of pitchers embarrassing hitters, so the technology most definitely exists!

When you consider how embedded music has become within sport, the options to use opponent song choices to your advantage seem endless. I am hardly the first (or most qualified) person to suggest as much, but that should only strengthen the argument. So take a page from Dan Lanning and think about how to re-condition the known musical conditions to work for your athletes rather than against them!

Tara Venkatesan, Andrew Demetriou, Hendrik Vincent Koops, & Daniel L. Bowling. 2025. Beating stress: Music with monaural beats reduces anxiety and improves mood in a non-clinical population. Frontiers in Health Psychology.

summary: In this study, researchers conducted a randomized controlled trial to examine the effects of listening to monaural beats embedded in music. Monaural beats are a type of auditory beat, which are defined as “amplitude fluctuations that arise when two tones with similar fundamental frequencies (F0s) interact, producing alternating constructive and destructive interference at a rate equal to their frequency difference.” Monaural beats occur when both tones are played to both ears, while binaural beats occur when the tones are presented separately to each ear. This study included 308 participants, who completed a 30-minute monaural beat intervention, a 30-minute beat only intervention, or a 30-minute pure tone intervention. Each intervention was also bookended by self-report measures of anxiety and mood. Results indicated that monaural beats + music reduced anxiety and increased emotional valence when compared to the beats alone and control conditions. Additionally, the beats alone condition resulted in a slight reduction in energy from before to after listening. According to the authors, the results suggest that adding monaural beats to music may reduce anxiety while also buffering against potential de-energizing impact of beats alone.

potential translations to sport: The most obvious application of this study? Add monaural beats to music that athletes already listen to ahead of competition. The athlete’s conscious experience won’t change, but the addition of the monaural beats may impact brain activity to reduce pre-competition anxiety and boost mood. In this study, monaural beats were matched closely to a track with musical properties that most people would find relaxing (e.g., lower BPM, sonically soothing), but determining what music an athlete should listen to comes with some risk. Music is highly personal, so it may be best to start with what an athlete has already established for pre-competition. If an athlete is interested in diving deeper into the process, however, there are several self-report tools available that can help tailor the musical experience beyond the addition of auditory beats.

Mariano Rivera’s entrance to the Metallica song ENTER SANDMAN is one of the clearest examples of the connection between sport and music. Interestingly, it wasn’t a decision Rivera had anything to do with; he didn’t know anything about the band and is on record admitting that he would have likely chosen Christian music if he had been part of the process. Regardless of Rivera’s personal connection - or lack of one - to the music, it became a symbol of defeat for countless opponents throughout his career. It makes me wonder if any opponent ever tried to do what Oregon coach Dan Lanning attempted to do with JUMP AROUND and re-condition their association ahead of facing Rivera. Given Rivera’s career stats, it doesn’t seem like it!

We turn to Bob Dylan, whose lyrics correspond with recent work by Courtex colleague Aren Ulmer on athlete identity. In a field that pushes the narrative that athletes are either “elite or average,” “high performers or low performers,” “good teammates or bad teammates,” “strong or weak,” Dylan reminds us that we are all everything. And, in the spirit of this issue, it is a reminder that your condition at any moment doesn’t have to be your condition in the next moment.

I’m a man of contradictions
And a man of many moods
I contain multitudes

bob dylan I CONTAIN MULTITUDES

Issue 20 introduced a new feature to highlight subscribers who are doing something worth checking out. For Issue 21, I put the spotlight on Emma Swift, an Australian-born songwriter who currently operates out of Nashville, TN. I found her work by way of Joi, whose Electric Radio Club has been a solid addition to my listening life. Both Swift and Joi make an appearance on show 21 of the chordinnation radio, with Joi as the guest DJ and Swift as the guest artist. I currently have Swift’s BLONDE ON THE TRACKS in heavy rotation and would strongly suggest you do the same!

The playlist for this issue draws from those songs that have become synonymous with a team or athlete through tradition or choice. Check it out!