BY DR. ALAN GOLDBERG, SPORT PSYCHOLOGIST
Let me ask you what may seem like a really silly question. How fast do you think you’d swim if you went into your best events with a 150-pound weight strapped to your back? Obvious answer: You’d be so weighed down that you wouldn’t be able to get off the blocks.
Believe it or not, this is exactly what a lot of swimmers unknowingly do at many of their big meets. They consistently go into their races worried about disappointing mom and dad and/or their coach. When you do this mentally, it’s as if you are trying to swim while literally carrying mom, dad and/or coach on your back. While you might not be able to actually see this weight, the crushing burden of letting others down is powerful and performance disrupting.
If you get up on the blocks and you’re preoccupied with wanting to make your parents and coach happy, and fearful that if you swim poorly, they won’t be, then you will inadvertently be creating the most powerful performance anxiety there is. Your nervousness will go into the red zone, your muscles will tighten and your arms and legs will feel like lead. No child ever wants to disappoint mom or dad. In fact, as kids, we’re hardwired to want to make our parents proud of us. When we fail, or have a less-than-stellar performance, it feels like we have directly disappointed those who matter to us. When this happens, we then worry they will love us less for it, and for a child, this is a scary and threatening situation.
Most parents out there would be absolutely horrified to know that you as their son or daughter were worried about losing their love if you didn’t swim fast enough. These parents would want you to know that their love for you is totally unconditional, regardless of how fast you go in the pool. Loving parents would want you to know that they were proud of you just because of who you were and that you didn’t have to perform in any way to earn their love, caring or respect. Loving, appropriate parents would want you to enjoy swimming completely unburdened by their own expectations. They would want you to swim just for YOU, because YOU wanted to and YOU loved it.
This is why it is absolutely critical that you learn to swim for yourself. This means that when you approach practice and meets, you do it just for YOU! In other words, your goals and motivation should always come from inside of you and not be about making those around you happy. The goals that you pursue in this sport should be all yours, regardless of how grand or modest they might be.
This also means that you learn to keep your pre-meet and pre-race focus of concentration on you and no one else. Worries about disappointing mom, dad or the coach means that you’re not keeping your concentration on you. When these kinds of “others” thoughts come up, you want to quickly return your focus to yourself and your swim. In addition, it’s critical that you learn to keep your focus in the moment, on what’s going on right now instead of allowing your concentration to jump ahead to the outcome and consequences of the race, (i.e. how people may be upset with you if you don’t go fast enough).
When you get up on those blocks you want to be totally unburdened by concerns with other’s expectations. You want to feel that you’re not swimming to prove your self-worth or lovability, but that you’re swimming from your heart, for the love of the sport. It’s only then that you’ll be able to consistently swim freely and fast.
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