It’s the season of ghosts, goblins, witches, and all kinds of other scary things. In swimming have you ever thought about what scares you before a race? Is it the possibility of failing, or is it the fear of pain (the good kind), maybe the thought of letting a coach or parent down. Whatever it is everyone has come face to face with this fear from time to time.
This may push some buttons with some, but I truly believe that society has become soft when dealing with failure especially when it comes to athletes and our youth. Failure is inevitable, every athlete has to face coming up short of their goals sometime during their time in the sport. You will miss that net in soccer, you will strike out, you will miss the basket, you will drop the ball and yes you will fall on the ice, and though you may not like it, I want you to understand that it is 👌. It’s part of the journey through life and the ☀️ will rise the next day and everything in your world will be okay.
If you do not come up short from time to time than I believe that you are not doing more to get to your goal. We have talked before about staying in your comfort zone and not taking that first step out of that zone to see what the possibilities are. If you notice I took out the word failure in this paragraph because maybe the word itself is what causes all the stress and fear. Maybe the first step to overcoming fear is to remove the word from our vocabulary.
Getting hung on the fear of failure, the final time distracts swimmers from learning opportunities that occur after the race. I say this because as coaches we try to offer suggestions for each swimmer to take back to practice to better prepare them for the next race. However, what we see and hear a lot of time is disappointment in that final time, and all they hear is noise out of our 👄.
After experiencing a bad race, a swimmer has two choices. They can either feel bad about themselves and the outcome from the event, or they can take the positive road and learn from what happened and come back smarter and stronger for the next race. Taking the second option will build your confidence and resilience in the sport. Confidence cannot be built in the presence of fear. When you step out of the comfort zone and conquer a race,you don’t fear it any longer.
I submit to you that an athlete who is over protected comes to believe that success should always be quick and easy, and all that does is lead to greater frustration when it doesn’t. In swimming 🏊♀️ this situation is instant with that posting of a swimmers final time. A lot of the process is lost such as, are the streamlines better, are the turns a little faster, are the strokes a little better, and did we swim the race a little smarter than before. Another big outcome that is overlooked is the place that is posted.
Long term success in this or any other sport is more important than the short term results. A temporary defeat is not the end of the 🌎, think of it as feedback and part of the process to make you stronger and smarter the next time you dive into that 🏊♀️.
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