Nick Brunelli's Keys to Success

This week’s Speedo Tip of the week comes from National Teamer Nick Brunelli. Brunelli offers his five keys to success.

Focus on now, but remember the future. You know that workout that slammed you yesterday? It's not only going to help you at your next meet, but also in 15 years when you have a big business meeting your boss puts you in charge of, and you have to work 20 hours in a day to get things going. You'll know what it means to work when you are tired. You won't be fazed by what others would consider an unreachable summit.

Assemble the moments. Every moment during the day there are choices to be made and throughout the day, they add up to create a feeling of how the day went. It’s up to you to choose correctly and match the goals you set in life with the choices you make in a day. Day after day, these choices add up to make that goal more attainable. If you want to go to the Olympics, it’s going to take many right choices throughout the day, every day, leading to that final moment at Olympic Trials. In the weight room doing that extra set, or during the last round of a set, force yourself to do everything right from your stroke to what you say to encourage others.

Be passionate and proud. Many people don't realize how much time and energy swimming takes up when done all-out. Be proud of the work you do in practice, and take that pride to become the best you can in anything you do. The best moments in many swimmers lives are right after the hardest sets or practices. Those moments are filled with feelings of achievement, success and absolute exhaustion.
Swim with meaning. Swim every stroke like you would want to swim when you achieve your goal time. The more times you swim with that perfect stroke, the sooner you will be swimming faster. When you decide to do something, fully commit to it. Commit mind, body and soul to your dreams and desires. This means on a daily basis making sacrifices that in the moment may not seem appealing but in the long run will matter the most.

When you fall, get back up. My favorite saying in recent years is, "Adversity causes some men to break; but others to break records." When you fall and get back up, use that as motivation to never fall again. Challenges that set you back and are later conquered can be some of the strongest motivation out there.

ABCs of Mental Training: H is for Having Fun

BY AIMEE C. KIMBALL, PhD

I agree with Abraham Lincoln, who said, “People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
I think that having fun is, in fact, a mental skill. Most people believe having fun is as easy as getting involved in something you enjoy, which is true. However, what happens when what you enjoy also becomes a source of pressure, anxiety, fatigue and pain?

Most athletes start swimming because they love being in the water and enjoy being with their friends. When they decide to turn their “hobby” into a competitive activity is when some of the “fun” can be taken away.

That is, when you now have to practice for two hours after school and you are being asked to push your physical limits, you may start to focus on the aspects of competitive swimming that you don’t enjoy.

Focusing on your dislikes is what can make the fun disappear. Then, when you start to get good, develop high expectations for yourself, and feel pressure to drop time every meet or win every race, you may find even more things you don’t like about a sport you used to enjoy.

If you take it to the next level and start swimming to possibly get or keep a college scholarship and your whole reason for swimming is based on the belief that you HAVE to swim well or you will lose this opportunity, then even more anxiety occurs.

Basically, the higher the level at which you compete, the more potential there is for you to find things you don’t like about swimming, and thus, swimming becomes less fun.

Don’t worry though, just because you are now competing doesn’t mean swimming has to cease being fun. As I said before, you control your own happiness.

Here are some things you can do to make sure you can still have fun while swimming competitively:

Focus on the positive
Like anything else in life, the more you focus on what you enjoy, the happier you will be. It is easy to go to practice focusing on how much you don’t want to be there, how tired you are going to be, or how much you hate when your coach yells at you. However, if you accept that all of those things are part of your reality and instead change your focus to what you are going to get out of the day, you’ll find it a lot more enjoyable. So, before heading to meets or practice, remind yourself what you are looking forward to while you are there, rather than what you’re dreading.

Remember the good stuff
If you are ever struggling and feel like some of the fun of the sport has been lost, pull out a picture of yourself from when you were really young. Maybe it’s from the first race you ever entered or from a day where you were just with your friends practicing your cannonballs. The picture should put a smile on your face and remind you that you chose to swim because of how happy being in the water makes you.

Embrace the pressure
The pressure you feel and the anxiety you experience don’t have to be detrimental. Instead of perceiving your expectations for yourself as a negative, recognize that it means you have confidence in your ability. If you didn’t know you were good, you wouldn’t have such high standards for yourself. Experiencing pressure just means you’ve created an opportunity for yourself to reach a higher level of success. That you’ve proven you are good enough to be in this situation should bring satisfaction rather than worry. Also, choose to view meets and difficult practices as small challenges that you are going to work through to overcome. A sense of pride should come from knowing you are working your hardest to achieve something meaningful to you.

Swim for the sake of swimming
While it’s easy to get caught up in external rewards such as medals, records and scholarships, you must keep in mind these are not the reasons why you swim. First and foremost you swim because it’s a sport you enjoy. The accolades are just a by-product of your hard work. We lose the fun when we think we are swimming to get something out of it. Make sure you remind yourself that you swim for enjoyment, for improvement and to be with friends. Then, by being involved in something you find inherently fun and putting forth the effort to see how good you can be at that activity, you are setting yourself up to enjoy the process of achieving success – not just for success itself.

Remember, having fun is up to you. No matter how hard practice is, no matter how “serious” the meet is, you can enjoy competition and all that it brings with it. It’s up to you to decide that your passion for the sport and everything you love about swimming are much more important than the aspects you don’t like. So next time you head to the pool, jump right in and have some fun!

Make it great!

Dr. Aimee

About Aimee C. Kimball, PhD

Dr. Kimball is the Director of Mental Training for the UPMC Center for Sports Medicine. She is an Association of Applied Sport Psychology Certified Consultant, and is a member of the American Psychological Association, the United States Olympic Committee’s Sport Psychology Registry, the USA Swimming Sports Medicine Network, and the NCAA Speakers Bureau. She works with athletes, coaches, and parents to help them achieve success in sport and life. For more information contact: kimballac@upmc.edu, 412-432-3777, http://sportsmedicine.upmc.com/MentalTrainingProgram.htm