ONE STEP AT A TIME

 

QUOTE FOR THE WEEK

“ Focus on the step in front of you, not the whole staircase.” 

I am pretty sure you have heard of this saying at some point in your young life.  You might even recall when I’ve reminded you with our saying of “ right foot, left foot, breathe.   But what’s it all mean really, well let’s explore and highlight how important that really is.

As a swimmer your races don’t start when you step onto the blocks, it begins long before that moment.  Some of you may be thinking it starts at practice but you would only be half right.  It all begins with that walk into the building and the attitude you walk in with. You can’t do everything at once and you certainly won’t accomplish much with a sour attitude.  Understanding what you need to work on and then going out and doing it is not always easy,  but with the right attitude those steps become easier to climb.

For you all those steps could be as simple as adding 1 dolphin kick to your underwater’s off the wall or maybe as we explained to the Gold Group on Saturday, it might be as simple as touching the pad on the wall every time.  Visualize the pad being there.  We are sure, no we are positive that everyone has had a race where they look up when they finish and see 00:00:00.  Well, guess what it might be because you don’t take your finishes seriously during training.

This all came about from Saturday practice as we worked through our fifties and we would challenge some of you, and you responded and did really well.  The only problem was we got a lot of this, “but it was hard or it hurt”.  Sometimes we see a challenge so great ahead that it seems impossible. Let me give you an example from something I read long ago.

“How you walk all the way from the west coast to the east coast?  You just take one step at a time.  Eventually you’ll get there if you keep going in the right direction.”

Why do we relax as we come to the wall instead of attacking the wall?  Why do we breathe after the flags?  Why do we not do strong pullouts off the walls?  These are the steps that you need to fix during practice so that in a race they are automatic and as you look back you realize that the little things really do matter. When you don’t focus on challenging yourself to fix them you stop going in the right direction.