Some of you may not be in the meet that you wish you were, and this was very evident with some swims over this past weekend, so I will repeat something that I touch on every season at the start and seem to repeat at this time of the year. This past weekend we had a lot of outstanding swims with over 80% best times. As a group we had about 25 more cuts made for one meet or another. The issue that I have is several of you were not happy with your performance, for example this one swimmer dropped 4 seconds off their 100 IM time but missed the JO cut (by 14 seconds). This swimmer truly believed that they were going to come into this meet at this time of the year and drop 18 seconds, a very high bar to set but very hard to attain right now.
As a coach I want you as a person and an athlete to set high goals for yourself, but at the same time we need to be able to get back up when they are not met, because you will not always attain them as an athlete. As an athlete you will stumble and fall more times than not, and for a swimmer a stopwatch will not always be kind, but in the end the race will still be won you can be sure of that. The question becomes are you going to be so hard on yourself that you end up out of that sport, that would be the ultimate defeat
Take a look at this stopwatch and I want you to notice the numbers on it, they are the same ones that appear before you start your race.
When you started out in this sport you saw lot of time drops every time you raced. When you were young it had to do as much to your body growing as it did with practice. Those early years were spent on the foundations so that as you got older and the growing slowed improvements could still be made. Think of it this way the more your time improves the closer to 00:00 you get, and the harder it becomes to see those big time drops. I may be wrong but I find it hard to believe that anyone will ever go 00:01 in say a 50 free. This is why I try to get you to forget times, and just race people and have fun with that, and sometimes the time drops will be there but as you get older they are few and far between. You have to be able to enjoy the process more than the result because that is what you will take with you from this sport and remember later in life.
Now those of you who are really hard on yourself after a not so good swim, I ask, is it the swim or is it because the outcome is not what you wanted. Now let's go back to practice and I will ask you again How many of you are hard on yourself when you Cut short a set or repeat? Stop on the wall? Get in late ? How many have perfect attendance, or at least 90%? How many of you consistently swim fast in a race or at practice, or blow it off because it just doesn't matter? How many times do I need to correct the little things at practice that you know you should be doing with every repeat? In my opinion if you are doing EVERYTHING right then you have earned the right to be a little hard on yourself, but more than likely your hard on yourself because the outcome is more important to you than is the process of getting there. If that is the case your not being fair to yourself.
Now hold your heads high the groups as a whole have followed the plan, come out on the other side and are now ready for the championship season and YOUR meet! GREAT JOB!
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