Using auditory stimulation to enhance athletes’ strength: An experimental study in weightlifting

In the last fifteen years sport psychology researchers have developed different perceptual strategies based on auditory stimulation, in order to improve athletes’ skills. Most of these strategies focused on providing athletes with the correct timing of action, in order to make this information available for motor production setting. However, it has been also demonstrated that some sounds can be a useful tool to modulate the physiological arousal, in order to optimize sport performances. In our study we propose a protocol of intervention based on the stimulation with an auditory track which intensity varies in correspondence of the physical effort of each phase of a bench press exercise. Eighteen participants performed three bench press lifts, both in experimental condition (with the auditory stimulus) and in control condition (without any stimulation). We measured the power exerted during the lifting. The results show that athletes can take advantage of the stimulus we provided, evidencing a higher average exertion of power in the experimental condition, compared to the control condition. Concluding, the results suggest that auditory perception can be a productive field of research in developing experimental strategies to improve athletes’ skills.