Kentucky Wildcats Football: No More Music In The Locker Room

Mark Zerof-USA TODAY Sports

It is commonplace for many athletes to get hyped up before a game. More often than not, music is involved. Whether it be calm music to sooth the nerves or super intense music to get them fired up, athletes often use music as a part of their pre-game routine. This becomes even more prevalent in college athletes, who are seen in the public eye quite often. They will generally be seen with their Beats By Dre on over their ears, bobbing their heads up and down to the beat of their favorite song. The question has been raised lately, specifically as a part of Kentucky’s high performance program by Erik Korem, on whether music actually gets athletes pumped up and ready to play the game. Now, many people would argue that it does indeed get them excited and ready to go. Others would argue that it doesn’t really do anything at all except keep the athlete focused to a small extent. Well, after doing some research, Korem found some unexpected results.

Korem explained in a CBS interview a little about his findings. “We actually showed them, through research, that there is something called ‘fight or flight’ response, and when you’re about to go in the game, or if you’re about to get into a fight, your nervous system excites. But when you’re constantly plugged into music, we found that your body doesn’t have that natural response.” Since these findings have been revealed to Korem, he is implementing a new idea in the Kentucky locker room. One that states no headphones, a policy that he encourages them to have while wolking around campus as well. “When we first started training, we wanted to show these guys how to naturally, and fully control what we call their ‘arousal levels’, and it wasn’t fun at the beginning, but then we explained to them that, ‘Guys, you have to learn how to create your own music’ and it started to click with them that YOU create your own level of excitement. You don’t want to be hooked on some type of stimulus.”

If these new findings are true and the policy is followed, fans should see the slow starts of the past corrected. By being able to build up that hype on their own, these athletes should be able to come out more inspired, more focused, and more ready to fight. I believe that we saw some of this from the defense last week against Louisville. They came out pumped up and firing on all cylinders. If the offense can jump on board and learn to come out with that same fire and passion, there should be no reason why we can’t hang with teams at the very least. This would be improvement, which is all Kentucky fans want to see this season. A constant improvement.