Day 121: I Wanna Be Like Mike

By Paul Tenorio

If you can even touch the work ethic the great ones, like Michael Phelps, use to be the best, then, even if you're as slow as Paul Tenorio, you can maximize your potential. (Photo by Gero Breloer/AP)

Diving Back In Archive

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In order to truly be successful, in my opinion — and this extends beyond sports — you can never be satisfied.

What makes someone great — the Jordans, the Tigers, the Hamms, the Phelps’ — is the drive. The never-gonna-quit mentality. The idea that I can always get better.

So every day when I swim, no matter how far I’ve come or how hard I work or whatever workout I do that I feel good about, I know how much more I can do, how much farther I can go.

In journalism, I constantly work to get to the level of the writers around me that I admire, some of whom I grew up reading. In swimming, where I am approaching four months in the pool, the vast potential for improvement ahead can hardly even be articulated.

There is so much to learn.

Every day I watch film of myself taken from that day’s practice, every day I think about what I did in the workout and I try to figure out how I can get better. Sure, I am able to swim longer distances…but am I doing it the right way? What is my technique like when I’m tired? How hard am I going in and out of turns? What can I do to be more efficient?

The biggest challenge of all this, of course, isn’t to write about it after the fact, but rather to analyze and realize it during the workout.

Today’s workout was an awesome example. The point of the whole set was to get you dogged tired and say, ‘Okay, now keep sprinting.’ This was a challenge to every swimmer to make sure that not only were you working hard and going fast, but that you were doing it the right way.

The set broke down like this:

Warm-up:
200 swim, 100 kick, 200 pull, 100 kick; 300 swim, 100 kick, 300 pull, 100 kick.

50 all-out sprint
200 kick
Two 50s all-out sprint
200 kick, two 25s zero breath
Three 50s all-out sprint
200 kick, four 25s zero breath
Four 50s all-out sprint
200 kick, six 25s zero breath
Five 50s all-out sprint

This set, in my opinion, is designed just as much to test your mental fortitude as it is to test your physical ability. If you do it right, you should be barely able to finish that 15th 50.

I used to get so frustrated during soccer practices back in the day when I saw people absolutely kicking butt in the the last sprints of a long sprint workout. It seems counter-intuitive to be mad at that. I should be happy my teammates are doing well. But that wasn’t the point. To me I always felt like, if you aren’t bent over sucking air and dying during those last sprints, you haven’t been doing it right. It doesn’t matter if you’re the fastest guy running (or in the pool) or the slowest. If everyone is going all out then everyone should by gassed after each sprint.

Thus, when you heard the set this morning you could easily think to yourself, ‘Okay, I’ll go a bit more toned down on the three 50s sprint,’ or ‘I’ll pace myself on the first and second of those final five sprints.’ But then you’re losing the whole entire point of the workout. This is about learning how to push through exhaustion. This is about creating a reference point to the third wall of a 100 or the final wall of a 200. When your arms feel like they each weigh 150 pounds, can you still push yourself?

I admit, I wasn’t perfect today. I was really, really tired and my form stunk as a result. It’s not that I wasn’t trying. In fact I would propose that it was the opposite. Because I was so tired and still desperately trying to go fast, my body was finding ways to feel like it was doing work without hurting.

But, as I said above, this was about going hard and fast — and doing it the right way.

So as I worked through the set and tried to catch my breath amid cramps and exhaustion, I was lucky to have Zack Wise next to me coaching me up, even ducking under water to see where my stroke was failing.

I wasn’t anchoring and pulling enough, my arms were sliding out before pulling down (super inefficient) and in the final 50 I was almost bobbing up out of the water instead of rotating through the hips and shoulder and keeping my stroke long, powerful and efficient.

I could have looked at the advice as a negative. That I was lazy and figured out a way to get around the hard work…while still working hard — that I lost the full effect of the workout. Instead, I’m choosing to look at it as what I talked about in the opening of this blog — I still have so much to learn and so many ways to get better.

As much as I took away the physical and mental aspects of today’s workout — getting tired and still going as hard as I could — what I learned most was that I have a million things I can do better with my stroke, a million ways to get better every day.

Jeff King has emphasized to me everything Zack pointed out today, but when someone separately watches you and takes time out of his day and workout to talk to you about it, you start to really wrap your mind around the improvements that need to happen.

Most importantly it provides the motivation to wake up and — no matter how sore you might be (and trust me I’ll be sore) — get back into the pool and maintain that focus to get better.

If you want to be great, if you want to do something the right way, that’s the drive it’s going to take.

I’ll never be a Michael Phelps or Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods. But if I can just hit a little on that mentality of greatness, if I can aspire to work my hardest the way they work their hardest, at least I can get as much out of it as I’m putting in.

Washington Post reporter Paul Tenorio will train with a swim club over the next few months and chronicle his journey as he attempts to transform from regular guy/sports reporter to competitive swimmer — everything from his waistline to his best times.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Diving Back In. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Keys to Success: Nathan Adrian

Nathan Adrian won gold this summer in the 400m free relay at the 2009 FINA World Championships in Rome. Here are the keys to his success:

1. Do your best to stay focused in practice. Many times practices turn into two or three hours of swimming back and forth with your favorite song stuck in your head. While this is a great way to pass the time, it may not be the most conducive to swimming your best. Instead, try focusing on one thing per practice that you want to improve. Mondays could be a day to focus on turns while Tuesday could be used to work on head position.

2. Don’t underestimate the importance of persistence. Everybody has a bad race or season. The best way to approach these disappointments is to learn from them and move on. A bad season could be used as motivation to work harder next season.

3. Communicate with your coach. Your coach is doing his or her best to make you the best swimmer possible. There is a reason you are doing what you are doing in and out of the pool. It is important to talk to your coach, and if you don’t understand why you are doing something, just ask.

4. Don’t be afraid of being great. Never become intimidated by anything when you swim. Most great swimmers all have one thing in common: they were never afraid to go out and race their heart out to try and do something special. Most recently, we all saw Jason Lezak prove that he knew he was great. Setting limitations on yourself is the worst thing you could do as a swimmer.

5. Enjoy the process. Most importantly, swimming should be fun. Although I have had to wake up at 5:20 a.m., five days a week for the last two months, I still look forward to the next time I get to hang out with my teammates at practice. Find something that makes swimming enjoyable for you and cherish the time that you get to spend doing it.

ABCs of Mental Training: I is for Injuries

BY AIMEE C. KIMBALL, PhD//Sport Psychologist

When you work hard, push yourself to your limits and engage in physical activity, you are not only competing with other swimmers, you are also competing with your body.

If you have ever been injured, you know how stressful and life-altering it can be. Whether it’s the disappointment of having trained so hard and no longer being able to compete or the feeling of being an outsider rather than a part of the team, there are many sources of injury stress.

It is important to know how to cope with this stress and what mental skills you can use to help throughout the recovery process. This article is about how to cope with injuries so you can get back in a pool ASAP.

Relax!

When you have physical tension or mental stress, your body uses its resources to fight the stress rather than to heal your injury. Also, if you go to physical therapy, and your muscles are tense (which occurs because you are stressed) you won’t be as flexible as you do your rehab exercises. This limits the progress you can make. If you are stressed about the injury or about other things in your life and you bring this to your physical therapy sessions, your focus will be on the stressors rather than the exercises. Because of this, you may not be pushing yourself and you may not be doing the exercise correctly, both of which can keep you from progressing as quickly as possible. Thus, it is important to know how to relax and to take the time to de-stress periodically throughout the day, especially before rehab.

Social Support

Make sure you have people you can talk to about the injury. You might find it helpful to talk to someone who has experienced a similar situation and is now back competing again. You may find just being around the team helps you, even if you are unable to swim. There are also mental training consultants and sport psychologists who understand what you are going through and who can be a “neutral” source for you to get out your thoughts and emotions and who can teach you how to refocus more positively.

Set Goals

Make sure you have goals for rehab. Most athletes set goals for improving their times or winning events. However, when injuries strike, all of those goals you were striving for change. As an athlete, you are used to working towards accomplishing something, so it’s important to channel that drive into your rehab and into goals you have in school or other areas of your life. For example, if you had shoulder surgery, make sure you talk to your surgeon and physical therapist about what the rehabilitation process is like. Have them educate you on milestones you are likely to experience throughout the recovery as well as obstacles you might face. If you can, at least once a week (if not every day) talk to your physical therapist or athletic trainer about what muscles or ligaments you are strengthening and write down goals that you want to achieve for each exercise. It’s important to recognize that with injury, small changes are big deals. Don’t just emphasize major accomplishments like the day you can swim at full speed, acknowledge range of motion improvements or increases in the number of reps you do while lifting. These goals provide you with motivation by letting you know you are getting closer to your ultimate goal and can provide that extra push on the days when you are mentally and/or physically struggling. Goals also can also help to diminish fear of reinjury when you return. Comparing what little you were able to do when you were first injured with the day you are fully cleared will give you greater confidence that you are well on your way to returning to full speed.

Keep an Injury Notebook

Some athletes find it very helpful to keep a notebook throughout their injury as a way to get their thoughts out of their heads. In this notebook, you can keep track of your goals each week. Chart what you are working on and what is improving. Make note of how your mood might be improving, what helps you to deal with pain, fatigue and stress. Take notes about what the coaches are teaching other swimmers so you can learn new things and recognize what the coaches want from their swimmers. The reason for doing this is: a) writing things down can serve as a stress reliever, b) setting goals can keep you focused during rehab and c) keeping track of improvement is a great motivator and confidence booster. This injury book can also provide encouragement after you have returned from injury. If you ever start to feel burned out you can always look at this notebook and remind yourself that you didn’t go through all of this to give up now.

Do Imagery

There is a lot of research within sport and other domains that shows how effective imagery can be in speeding up the recovery process. Some studies show that imagining yourself healing influences blood flow, optimism and sense of control, which can all help you to get back in the pool sooner. Additionally, by having vivid images in your head and essentially “feeling” yourself swimming, you keep your muscle memory in tact and your skills won’t decrease as much as if you sit around and don’t think of swimming at all.

The above suggestions are just a few ways to address the mental aspects of injury. While no one wants to get injured, it is unfortunately a part of sport. By choosing to view the injury as another challenge to overcome, you will develop a very valuable life skill-the ability to succeed in the face obstacles. You can also learn a lot about yourself and about your sport while injured. Thus, while dealing with an injury can be a very stressful experience, you can return a stronger competitor and a more mentally tough individual once you’re back in the water.

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