Reminders about Mental Toughness

BY LENNY WIERSMA, Ph.D.
To reach your goals, you’ll need to learn to deal with stress and keep a healthy perspective. Below is a list of five short reminders about mental toughness that every swimmer should follow:

1. You have to be in control of yourself before you are in control of your performance. Take deep breaths, slow down the thoughts racing through your head and smile.
2. Allow yourself room to fail. Remind yourself that taking a chance and failing is better than not having the guts to fight in the first place.
3. Swimming your best when you feel good is easy. Swimming your best when you are tired, scared or sick: now that’s an athlete. Remember, it’s not how you feel. It’s how you act. You don’t always have to be confident, but you should always act like it.
4. Last year, a 44-year old man ran 50 marathons in 50 consecutive days in 50 different states, then turned around and ran from New York to St. Louis, almost 1,300 miles away and the start of the first race. What’s the point? The 200 butterfly won’t kill you.
5. There’s a big difference between winning and competing. Learning how to compete is a much more useful skill later in life than the dusty trophy you won when you were 12.

Lenny Wiersma is an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at California State University, Fullerton, and a member of USA Swimming’s High Performance Network in Sport Psychology.