“WIN”. What’s Important Now

This week brings about the end to a few things that have happened in the last nine weeks or so.  The first thing is that as that school 🔔 rings on Friday it will mark the end of your first grading period. A lot of you have already shared your school endeavors with us so we are sure that when those grades come out there will be some great marks.   Always remember that the title you carry is that of being a student/athlete and notice which noun appears first in that phrase. I have finally finished reading all of your letters containing your goals and dreams for this season and it made for an interesting read with myself and. Henry.  As we read through them it dawned on me that setting that goal is not necessarily the main thing.  The important thing we would like you to consider is how you go about achieving it and staying with that plan. We have already discussed the internal battle in your head between what we called “the force” versus the “dark side”. It is a constant battl

OCTOBER OPEN MEET WRAP UP We were very encouraged with the effort that was put out by all of our Junior Blue, Junior Gold and Senior Prep groups in the meet this past weekend.  The hard work that each of you are putting in shows in the way you raced over the weekend.  The way you approached those blocks and the way all of you exploded off into your starts showed us you came to race.  Great Effort. We saw a big improvement with your underwater dolphins and streamlines, and make no mistake about it this is an area that needs your focus and constant attention during practice.  The coaches can not watch every single turn and it is easy for you to fall into the trap of taking a wall off.  I would say to you that if this is you, the old saying applies “You are only cheating yourself” and it will show up when you least expect it.  Take ownership these are your races to win or lose, no one else’s.  Perfect those streamlines and dolphin kicks.  The next natural progression now is to p

Do you go into a meet or more specifically your races with a checklist, or do you just wing it and hope for the best results, and if good your confidence is high.  The only problem is that sometimes the results don’t meet your expectations.  Now what?  Do you fall apart and let it create negative feelings about yourself as a swimmer 🏊. In the book “The Swimmers Mind” it talks about having a checklist ✅ with five performance priorities.  They are “ Process, Presence, Enjoyment, Standards, and Control.”   Let’s look at these further.   We have always talked about how it is important to trust your training and the process that has gotten you to that exact moment you step onto the block. We don’t focus on the outcome of the race, or that Jo or NASA cut.  Now I’m not saying that those things aren’t important to you, but when your whole mindset is on those things you forget to race and perform the specific things during your race that you have been working on.  The Process! The next ✅ mark

It’s 5 o’clock in the morning, time to goggle up and dive into the old watering hole for practice.  First words to coach are not hello but more like “I’m tired” and is it going to be hard today?  Not a great mindset to start a workout that is meant to get you to your goals, right.  The way you talk to yourself is as important as what you do in the pool, and what you eat.  If you say something enough subconsciously you start believing it and acting it out.   All the hard work you put in, the talent that you have and the physical ability you possess won’t help you in a race if you have a negative mindset, sure you may get lucky and have a good race once in a while but in the long run you will always come up short.  The attitude and overall outlook with which you approach your workouts, your swims, your meets, your warmups, your races and the sport as a whole will determine your success in the long run.  What you think on a daily basis the attitude that you portray your swimming both at

PLUG THE LEAKS ! Now that we have our first meet of this young season in our bags, it’s time to look forward and see where we go from here.  That meet is done and we saw some great things from you all with the areas that we have been working on. One area that I really wanted to see you buy into is that of becoming more of a process oriented swimmers as oppose to a results only swimmer.  We had talked about taking more of an approach of looking at the place you came in as opposed to your time in the race.  This was the first step in trying to change your mindset to help you become a better swimmer.  In the coming days and weeks we will delve further into this area. In the first step I want you to think of your swimming as a bucket that contains everything that contains everything you need to be successful in your swimming endeavors.  The fuller you can keep your bucket the more you are able to draw from during your races.  The things that you should be filling your buckets wi

With the first meet of the young season it’s time take what we’ve learned and move on.  As I be already told you I’m not a big fan of watching the score board this early in the season and although it can be a good read at times it doesn’t always give the entire story.  At this time of the year I take more enjoyment in watching you do the things well that we have been working on in practice, that is true progress no matter how the scoreboard reads.   Two of the things we have tried to hammer the first few weeks of practice are the way we work our streamlines and underwater dolphins off the wall and the way we finish our races.  I saw a lot of great effort being put forth in these areas and believe are making some real progress that will carry us to some amazing results in March and April. An area that I see we all have to work on and be better at is the way we talk to ourselves.  We need to have a lot more positive self talk and less negative self talk.  We talk about this all the time