Music & performance: a soundtrack for Spurs

The relationship between music and mood is well-documented. The sound of your surroundings can lift your spirit, focus your mind, steer you to sleep or prime you for action – often without you consciously noticing the change. But can music make you perform better at sport? With the help of Music Concierge, Tottenham Hotspur is currently in the process of finding out.

In May 2018, Spurs opened the doors to The Lodge – a state-of-the-art 40-bedroom accommodation offering to accompany the team’s world-class training centre in Enfield. The training centre exists to get the players in peak condition on the pitch. The Lodge is designed to look after them off pitch; not merely offering the first team a place to stay before games, but providing them with a precision-engineered environment totally focused on enhancing their well-being, team spirit and performance.

When the first guests – the Brazilian national team on their way to the World Cup in Russia – set foot in the purpose-built crescent building last summer, they were welcomed into a setting where every detail had been considered. The Lodge is designed to be the optimum environment for players to spend time between training sessions, free from the stress, distraction and unpredictability of everyday life. By spending time in surroundings where everything is geared towards their wellbeing, the players are mentally and emotionally primed to perform the second they step onto the pitch.

That means all the facilities you might expect – teched-up gym, hydrotherapy spa with hot and cold recovery pools, relaxation lounge, cinema room that doubles as both an exercise studio and a venue for team talks.

Biophilia abounds, with plant life and greenery exerting their calming, oxygenating influence both throughout the building and surrounding it.

Areas such as the dining room and garden are designed to foster team spirit and camaraderie, with communal tables and a firepit encircled with bean bags.

Lighting has been coordinated to shift in temperature depending on the time of day and the activity being performed. And, when Harry Kane and co head to bed, they walk down a 30ft corridor illuminated by a play of star-like lights mapping out the movement of the ball in some of the greatest goals in history.

In short, everything has been done to encourage Tottenham’s players to relax, bond, and focus when they’re in residence before a game – and that, of course, includes the sounds that they hear. As the Lodge neared completion, the club approached Music Concierge to complete the aural piece of the jigsaw. Management were determined to ensure that the sounds the players were exposed to as they progressed through the day worked in harmony with The Lodge’s other sensory stimuli to improve player’s wellbeing and gently steer their behaviour from dawn to dusk – a best-practice daily routine set in sound.

Drawing on our research into the psychology of music, the Music Concierge team have put together a programme specifically designed to shepherd elite athletes through the training day. From highly motivating morning sounds, to uplifting, positive music that encourage team socialising over lunch. The soundtrack creates a subtle emotional framework that brings rhythm to the day, culminating in soothing, restful compositions that kick in at set times each day to encourage rest and sleep.