HOW YOU DOING

 

How's your swimming doing.  After the long course meet I sat down and struggled to nail down a topic for you all that just might strike a cord with some of you.  You see I left that meet somewhat frustrated in the fact that so many of you felt disappointed in your races and I could not understand why.  Was it the fact that expectations were too high?  Maybe you were not clear on how to set expectations or goals.  Was it me and the way I set you up for expectations?  I didn’t know the answer but what I did understand was that more than a few of you needed help if we were going to move forward with any confidence.

Some things that we knew going into the meet included the following;

• First long course meet since 2019
• Times in meet sheet were at least 2 year old
• Many new events were going to be swam, thus an abundance of N.T.
• Many mako swimmers making their first appearance in a long course meet

And now the big questions.  What were your expectations?  What were your coaches expectations?  Probably not the same but a good bet would be that your expectations involved a time and ours were probably a little more complicated to be sure.

Okay down to the nuts and bolts of this.  After many of our mako swimmers races they would come back, we talked and this was the look I got from some of you (not all) but was clear that a lot of expectations were set high and and results fell short.  The majority of our races over the weekend produced many best swims and times yet I often heard, I.m not happy with that' or I could go a lot faster" and than it was "that time is so old".  We were all winning in the pool but mentally a lot of us were using the race.  It's okay to demand perfection from yourself as long as you recognize that your human and perfection 100% of the time rarely happens in life.  Life is hard and sports especially swimming where we are relying on a clock is no different.

Let's take football and look at the running back who picks up a couple of yards and the result is a first down.  It's like they just scored a touchdown and won the game but it's just a first down and they let everyone know.  Sure every time they touched the ball they have goals of going all the way and scoring a touchdown but they are willing to take that small win and build on it for that next opportunity.  The point is to accept the win no matter how BIG or small and build on that, move forward towards the next race.

Setting goals and expectations are important and a necessity if you are going to achieve anything.  When setting goals try to remember these sayings;

1. A person who aims at nothing is sure to hit nothing
2. It's okay to aim high and fall short.
3. Big problem is to aim low and hit

If you continuously are unhappy with your results because they don't meet your expectations you continually feel like your letting yourself down, you start to become disheartened and eventually lose trust in yourself as a swimmer.  When the trust in yourself breaks down there is a cascading effect which are, you stop setting high expectations, you avoid events you're afraid of and finally you stop being aggressive in your swims.  It your mind when you approach your swimming like this it becomes easy to fall short.  You can better accept the results and at the same time justify them to yourselves.  

In closing remember that when you step up onto the blocks and it's GO time take your results along with the wins no matter howBIG or small and move on to your next challenge.  This is the way you begin to build trust in yourself, your training, and your preparation.  Take ownership in the races, after all they are not your parents races, not your coaches races, they are YOURS and YOURS alone.  Your easy race or practice was always your last one.