By Olivier Poirier-Leroy
How many times have you been standing on a cold pool deck, looking at the nine-paragraph- long main set that coach is scrawling on the whiteboard, the sets and intervals trailing off into the bottom corner as he is running out of space for it all, and thought to yourself…
“No way. No chance. I can’t.”
Over the years involved in the sport I have caught myself saying it from time to time, and have certainly heard it from fellow swimmers.
You might be familiar with some of the greatest hits of “I can’t”:
- I can’t beat that swimmer; they are too fast.
- I can’t do that interval; I’ve never done it before.
- I can’t be early to practice; I have too much on my plate.
- I can’t do that set; it’s way too hard.
And on and on.
Unchecked, those pesky two words end up dictating how we react to a lot of the stuff that comes our way without the giving ourselves the benefit of trying and actually seeing for ourselves.
Look, the sport is hard, it’s tough, and the rewards come with a real investment of time and energy. I get it.
Getting there is hard enough without having those two little but not-so-little words rattling around the back of our mind every time adversity breaststrokes down the middle of our mental lane.
The effects of I can’t’ing are real:
It leaves you feeling helpless. Just like that, the situation is now impossible and out of your hands. And you know what happens next: a deep, salty feeling of helplessness. And nobody likes that feeling. I’d rather get kicked in the mouth by a breaststroker. But hey, that’s just me.
What you are really saying is “I won’t.” When you say that you can’t do something, you are telling yourself that it is impossible. So no need to feel guilty about giving up, right? By labeling it as impossible, we can find a sense of comfort in knowing we never had a chance, and that it would have been pointless to try in the first place.
It means fewer results. The most real effect of I can’t? It becomes much harder to accomplish anything! If you approach everything that is difficult with the attitude that it can’t be done then, well, nothing gets accomplished. Look, I’m not saying you can be Batman (and my parents said I could be anything I wanted, pfft) or that you will swim a :10 second 50m freestyle one day. But there is a massive gulf between the things you can’t do and the things you won’t do.
How to Combat Chronic I Can’t’ing
You probably already knew that telling yourself “I can’t” all the time isn’t the greatest habit. Maybe you’ve tried to curb your limiting self-talk in the past, or tried forced optimism on yourself (which I find often has the opposite desired effect – you know more than anyone when what you are saying is disingenuous).
From personal experience, “I can’t” is not something that ever completely goes away. Sure, it can be softened with experience (“I’ve done sets way harder than this already and I was fine!”), but it will always be there. Quietly waiting to pounce when you are feeling weak and unsure.
The 1MR Trick
This is a little piece of mind judo I have been using on myself for years (shhh, don’t tell me that I’m doing it) to great effect.
And it works like this: thinking about the sum total of something can feel overwhelming. We look at the totality of what is facing us and get discouraged.
10x400 free on a tight interval? 5 morning workouts this week? Doing a 2000 for time?
Instead, concentrate on literally only the very next thing. Nothing else. The mental approach is to promise myself to do one rep and that’s it.
Just one more rep.
Commit to doing the first 400 free and that’s it. Commit to that first morning practice and that’s it. Commit to the first 200 of that timed 2k and that’s it.
Something funny happens after you start… It gets easier. Well, maybe not easier, but doable, and less impossible than you initially thought it would be. You’ll even likely find yourself wondering why you resisted so much to begin with.
My brain hasn’t caught on to this little mental trick, and so I use it pretty much every day, whether it is doing laps at the pool, running, writing, or watching Netflix (“Okay, just one more!”).
Over the past couple years I have received countless emails from swimmers and coaches who have found remarkable success doing this. They are often blown away by how something so simple can work so well.
After all, thinking about doing a whole set or workout is crushing and fosters a sense of “I can’t.”
But doing just one rep? Just one effort swim?
That isn’t so bad. With the pressure off of our shoulders suddenly it isn’t “I can’t”, it’s “I probably can.”
And often enough, that’s more than you need to get you started and carry you through that set or workout you once thought impossible.
Olivier Poirier-Leroy is a former national level swimmer. He is a regular contributor of Splash Magazine and also writes over at YourSwimLog.com, where he shares swim sets from coaches and swimmers across the country.
He is also the publisher of YourSwimBook, a ten-month log book and mental training skills guide for competitive swimmers.
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