When you think of getting better most of your focus is geared to your races at meets and that end result, the final time, but what about getting better at practice.
How do you approach practice each day has a lot to do with your success at meets. There is a thing called mindless swimming where your mind is swirling around like a tornado just wrecking havoc on everything you are trying to accomplish.
Look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself this 🙋♀️ question, do I fit one of the following swimmer modes.
🏊♀️ “The swimmer who has huge goals for their season, but struggles to put big chunks of high-grade effort in practice.”
🏊🏻♂️ “ The swimmer who who backs down when things get rough in practice.”
🏊 “ The swimmer who knows what they need to get better, but finds themselves coming up against mental blocks that they can’t conquer.
The conversations that you have with yourself may look similar to some of the following ones;
- Why am I not closer to my goals?
- Why can’t I swim as fast as my teammates?
- What if I work hard all season but my goals aren’t met?
These are normal conversations that swimmers have from time to time and as we have discussed before it’s human nature, and they are all fear based. "You can side-step a lot of this fear-based, movement-stopping, improvement-blocking stuff when you start asking the right questions."
Try this, treat practice like a meet, and what I am talking about is winning just like you are trying to accomplish in your races. "Here is an example, let's say you want to crank up your underwater dolphin kick this season." The problem is that you fear failing so you don't work at it and the reasons are many, it's hard, it's uncomfortable being under water, I can't hold my air (it's not about hiding it but a case exhaling slowly). The problem lies within and the simple truth is that you don't put in any meaningful effort into improving it, and this can also be applied to breathing, stroke corrections, turns and streamlines. This can also apply to areas away from the pool such as your eating habits, hydration, sleep habits among some. All of this is directly tied to being successful on race day.
How do I WIN at practice? Sometimes it only take a few minutes each day for example, performing a tighter streamline with 1 extra dolphin off each wall during let's say 10x100's takes only a few minutes. The result is that now you have worked on it 40 times during the set. The next day add another kick or make them faster, the point is you start winning during practice and it builds your confidence and reduces your fear.
It's like making your bed every morning, regardless of how the day goes it started by accomplishing one small task and if you can do that you can change how your story is written.
No matter how small it seems, Go out and WIN the day.
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