Interactive associations of daily music engagement and nutritional behavior with psychological performance in competitive athletes: a 14-day naturalistic diary study.

BACKGROUND

Music engagement and nutrition are each linked to athletes' mental states, yet their combined, day-to-day influence under real training conditions remains poorly understood.

OBJECTIVE

To determine whether daily music engagement and nutritional behavior are independently and interactively associated with psychological performance in competitive athletes.

METHODS

In a 14-day naturalistic digital diary study, 180 competitive athletes (≥18 years) from university teams and sports clubs reported daily music engagement, nutritional behavior, training load, sleep quality, and psychological performance. The primary analyses used multilevel mixed-effects models to separate within-person from between-person variation and to test the music × nutrition interaction. The final reported dataset comprised 2,184 athlete-day observations from 156 athletes; the handling of excluded participants and missing records is described in the Methods.

RESULTS

Within-person increases in music engagement (β = 0.19, p < 0.001) and nutritional behavior (β = 0.24, p < 0.001) were each independently associated with higher same-day psychological performance. The music × nutrition interaction was positive (β = 0.11, p = 0.003), indicating that the association between music engagement and psychological performance was stronger on days characterized by more favorable nutritional behavior.

CONCLUSION

More favorable daily music engagement and nutritional behavior were jointly associated with greater psychological readiness. Because the design was observational and concurrent, the findings should be interpreted as within-person covariation and require confirmation in prospectively powered experimental studies.