MENTAL TOUGHNESS

 

"Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will."

Let’s dive into that quote and see if we can apply it to our swimming or even daily lives.  

As a swimmer (athlete), being able to to quite that negative and destructive voice in your head can hinder your ability to perform.  

"Performance = Potential - Interference" Simply stated you will swim, compete and perform your best when you have no interference or mental blocks.  Remember our old mental exercise when we kept putting on backpacks, remember that heavy feeling with each additional bag.  Thats you trying to swim with all that garbage dancing in your head.  You need to develop a mechanism to clear your head of all that garbage. How can you take out that garbage and clear your head,  we give you the "4 step  R.A.C.E. formula.

R for relentless.  It comes down to the fact you must be relentless about your ability and your desire to change those negative thoughts in your head that seem like they are out of your control.  They are not, you and only you control your thoughts. come up with ways that take you to a good place before your races.

A for awareness.  Negative thoughts are destructive to your performance, but it comes from a very useful and natural problem solving ability.  This thought process is very powerful and will normally win over the positive mindset before you aware it's happening.  As a coach we may say things such as; "stop overthinking " or "you just have to believe in yourself" but we also know it's not that easy.  It's up to you to get to the source of the problem and get rid of it.

C for clear.  Think back to when you had a really good race.  Remember that felling? What were you thinking?  There is a reason why you race the way you do  and a reason why you respond and react the way you do and that goes for the negative mindset also.  Here are some negative thoughts that all of you have struggled with at some time in your young lives; I'm not good enough.  

• I don't deserve to win.  
• I'm too small. 
•  I'm not fast enough. 
•  I don't deserve to win. 
•  I'm tired. 
•  I don't feel good.   

I really believe that if you keep saying this that eventually it becomes truth and will define you.  You need to develop ways to clear these thoughts.  Each time you have this thought have a counter thought to clear it. 

E  for emotional mastery. "Thoughts = Emotions = Feelings = Performance"  Close your eyes and think about that for a second.  If you were to crowd your mind with nothing but positive thoughts and events and think think nothing but positive confidence, positive confidence and more positive confidence, what will happen.  Your body is so tight and pumped up or perhaps not pumped up enough that it becomes hard to perform at your best.  All that positive thinking for naught, right?  

As much time as you put in the water, it is important to spend some time with the R.A.C.E. formula to clear the virus that lives between your ears.

As a swimmer it is crucial that you learn to stay positive regardless of the results of your races.  Take a second and look around and you just might realize that the very best swimmers have races where quite often, they post times that are not their best, or maybe they lose races.  In fact these situations occur more regular than the other side of the coin.

Let's be honest with ourselves most swimmers if not all find themselves in this situation at some time throughout their swimming and possibly more than once.  However the swimmer who is faced with this can find strength in gradual progress from within.  If you  are a swimmer who has just come off of a bad race or meet go back to practice and see if what kind of effort you can put in.  

Coach Wendy and I talked to the Gold kids yesterday about what kind of effort that was talked about in last week's post.  When you think about effort it's not always about swimming up and down the pool as fast as you can.  It is also about paying attention to all the LITTLE things in your swimming that will help you become a better swimmer.  When your coaches what you to go ALL OUT they will let you know, but in the meantime pay attention on the LITTLE things we are trying to get out of the set.  Often those are the things that make the difference when it comes to dropping times.  Think back to when a race didn't turn out the way you envisioned, is there anything that you can improve on such as a turn, underwater, breathing, aggressiveness, strategy, rest, nutrition.  A lot to think about.  You have no time to dwell on the negative if you want to come back a better you period.

There are so many aspects of swimming that can lead to you feeling down if you let it.  But if you are optimistic and have a positive mindset, you can erase those thoughts and find not only a better YOU, but a better place mentally.