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 and away the pool has a direct impact on your performance.
There are two mindsets that each of you possess, the negative mindset which is when “confidence is low, the desire to compete isn’t quite there, you’re not really enjoying yourself, and you’re not focused on your race." Then we have the positive mindset where “ confidence is high, you have the desire to compete, you’re really enjoying yourself, and you’re completely focused on your race.” Like in Star Wars it’s the struggle of “the force or the dark side.” The inner struggle between the two is real and difficult but the more you can stay with the force and feel good about yourself the better the better your performances will be. Stay with Chewbacca and the force!
Think about this, you have a really bad swim and you don’t understand why. One of the hardest thing as coaches we have to do is talk you off the cliff and get you to understand that as athletes this happens all the time only in swimming its much more in your face because of the 0:00::00. Just because you had a bad swim does not mean that you did something wrong or all of a sudden you’ve become a bad swimmer, but unfortunately that’s the way we often look at it, and as a direct result we start drifting towards the “dark side.” The key is having a positive mindset not only when workouts and races are going well, but learning to control that inner struggle with ourselves and staying in a positive mindset when things don’t go your way, and they will from time to time. Now there are those times where you will have those races accompanied by less than desired results and it could be from missing practice, coming back from illness, lack of race strategy, or your technique was off. Maybe you have been working on something different in practice and this is the first time you used it in a race and the result was below your expectations. This will happen, but your mindset and the way work through it will determine how fast you are able to bounce back.
Let’s face it, staying in a positive mindset when things are going well and you're dropping time is easy. Like a birthday it’s your day with cake and ice cream after every race. It’s when things go wrong that the hard work begins when there is a bad time, no cake and ice cream not even a present to unwrap. If you have worked on the way that you talk to yourself getting through these times will be easy. The first step in all of this is not to let yourself get to high or sink so low. Think of your emotions as a scale from 0-5. (0__1___2__3__4__5). The more you can keep your emotions in check between the 3 and the 4 the easier it will be to stay in a positive mindset.
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