Having a Bad Day? Bummer for you.

Posted by Glenn Mills on May 30, 2011 12:51PM (0 views)

I've written and re-written this a few times.  I'm not really sure the right tack to take to get this point across, so I'll make it short.

There is a harsh reality of athletics: There is a direct relationship between work and reward.  With that said, and don't just read these next words, understand them - your competition and the clock don't care about your excuses.

The next time you sit back and feel sorry for yourself because you have too much work, or you're too tired, or you're sore from practice the day before... thank God that you have such problems and not real ones.

The athletic life is short lived.  Before you know it, you'll have a real job and be wishing your biggest problems were if you were going to get your math homework done.  I've adopted a new motto this year when talking to swimmers:  You have two choices in your career.  You can start working on your excuses, or you can start working on your solutions.

Now, sit back for 10 minutes and watch the following video (if it's not showing up, hit refresh).  The next time you feel sorry for yourself, think about people who would LOVE to be in your shoes, with such simple problems.

Visit Sean's Website and follow him on twitter.  Keep reminding yourself that most of us have choices.  Typically the best ones, are the hardest ones.

Go Swim

SWIMMMING FAST WHEN IT COUNTS: TOP 10 MENTAL TOUGHNESS TIPS

BY DR. ALAN GOLDBERG//SPORT PSYCHOLOGIST

There's no question that success in the pool on race day is 95% mental and 5% physical. By the time that big race rolls around, all the hard work has been done. That lifetime best swim is already inside of you, just waiting for you to release it. Make use of these ten mental toughness tips to help you get that fast swim out when it counts the most:

1.  STAY CALM & LOOSE PRE-RACE – Staying loose and relaxed the hours and minutes before you swim is the secret to going fast under pressure. Tight muscles wreck your stroke mechanics and kill your endurance, making it impossible for you to swim to your potential. Loose muscles allow your body to perform as trained. Listen to relaxing music, talk with friends, keep yourself distracted from thinking about the race, keep your breathing slow and deep and have fun pre-race to help yourself remain calm and loose.

2.  LEAVE YOUR GOALS AT HOME ON RACE DAY – Your goals are a motivational tool that helps drive you to work hard each and every day in practice. They should NEVER be brought on deck with you on race day because they will weigh you down. Swimmers who think about or dwell on their goal times right before and/or during their races, make themselves too nervous and physically tight to swim fast. Remember, you don't have to think about your goal times at meets in order to reach them. 

3.  STAY IN YOUR OWN LANE – Keep your pre and during race focus of concentration in between your two lane lines on what YOU are doing and NOT on the competition. The more you concentrate on what you are doing, the more relaxed you'll stay, the faster you'll go and the better chance you'll have of actually beating the competition. Conversely, the more you think about and focus on what other swimmers are doing, the more nervous you'll get, the slower you'll go and the less likely you'll be to beat them.

4. STAY IN THE “NOW” BEFORE AND DURING YOUR RACES -  One of the more costly mental mistakes swimmers make is to allow their pre- and durin- race focus of concentration to “time travel.” When you mentally leave the now and jump ahead to the future or fall back to the past, you'll make yourself uptight and sabotage all of your hard work. Discipline yourself to keep your focus in the “now,” both before and especially during your races. At the meet, focus on one race at a time and during your races, focus on one stroke or turn at a time.

5. BE AWARE WHENEVER YOUR CONCENTRATION DRIFTS AND IMMEDIATELY BRING IT BACK -  It's perfectly normal for you to lose your focus before and during your races because there are usually tons of things that can distract you. Understand that losing your concentration won't really hurt you. What will cause you to consistently swim slowly is losing your focus and not quickly returning it back to the right focus. Discipline yourself to recognize the instant your concentration leaves what YOU are doing in the NOW and quickly bring yourself back.     

6. KEEP YOUR RACE FOCUS ON FEEL, NOT ON THOUGHTS – Swimming fast happens when you are focusing on the feel of what you are doing without thinking about it. For example, this could be how much water you're pulling, feeling a stretch under your arm each stroke or feeling your body move forward rather than up and down. Thinking thoughts like “I've got to go faster,” “She's pulling ahead of me,” or “My arms and legs feel like lead,” is a major distraction that will always slow you down. Focus on feel when you race and when thoughts intrude, quickly return your concentration back to the feel of what you're doing.

7. HAVE FUN – If you want to have the meet of your life, then you have to understand that this can only happen when you are having fun before and during the meet. Fun = speed. If you make a meet or any race too important, and you're too serious going in, then that will drain all the fun out of you and in its place will be a lot of nervous tension. When you're having fun, you're mentally and physically loose and relaxed, and as we talked about in point No. 1, staying calm and loose is the secret to swimming fast under pressure.      

8. FOCUS ONLY ON THINGS THAT YOU CAN CONTROL – There are a lot of things at meets and in races that are directly out of your control. For example, you have no direct control over how fast your competition swims, what kind of pool you're competing in, who's in your heat or the time you went in your last race or meet. When you focus on these “uncontrollables” either before or during your races, you'll get nervous and physically tight, lose your confidence and swim poorly. Instead, keep your concentration only on those things that you can control. 

9. KNOW THAT LAST MINUTE DOUBTS AND NEGATIVE THOUGHTS ARE NORMAL – It's very common to have last minute doubts and negative thoughts pop into your head right before you race. Know that you can still swim your best with this negative thinking going on just as long as you stay calm, accept the thinking for what it is – simply brainwave activity – and then quickly refocus your concentration on the task at hand. Try not to fight with the negative thoughts, replace them with positive ones, or work to keep them out of your mind. This approach only makes the negative thinking stronger. Instead, notice them, accept them as normal, and then refocus.

10. TRUST AND LET IT HAPPEN – You'll always swim your very best when you relax, trust your training and let the fast swim come out, as opposed to trying too hard and  forcing it out. When you make a race too important, there's a tendency to respond by tightening up and muscling the race. Instead, trust your training and your body, know the fast swim is inside and just let it happen. 

USA Swimming Article – SPEEDO Tip of the Week

SWIM FASTER TODAY

BY CHELSEY WALDEN SCHREINER

For this week's Speedo Tip of the Week, we bring you five little things you can do right now to help yourself swim faster right away.

Streamline. Streamline. Streamline.
Streamlining upon entering the water and off your walls may be obvious, but it is often overlooked or the first thing to go when your arms tire and muscles scream. However, it is one of the most important habits you can practice over 100 times during a workout. Streamlining reduces drag and therefore keeps your body moving faster in the water. Those hundredths of a second can mean the difference between places. Remember, Jason Lezak out-touched Alain Bernard by just eight one-hundredths of a second in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay at the 2008 Olympic Games.

Practice head position
“If you’re head is moving, your body is moving,” says Kate Lundsten, coach of the Minnesota Team Aquajets and internationally-ranked National Teamer Rachel Bootsma. Like streamlining, your head position can affect the amount of drag on your body and the efficiency of your stroke. Strive for a neutral head position throughout your stroke.

No illegal turns
“Swim in practice how you want to swim in meets,” says the Golden Goggles Breakout Swimmer of the Year Missy Franklin. “That way you don’t have to worry about it when you’re racing, and it will just come naturally.” This includes illegal turns in practice. The last thing you want to do in your next 200 IM is miss the two-hand touch because you forgot to practice it in training.

Go into walls fast
Working to swim fast in the middle of the pool is only part of the race. The wall may seem like a good place to rest, if only for a tenth of a second, but your competition may be thinking the same thing. According to T2 Aquatics coach Tom Yetter, who has coached multiple swimmers to top age group rankings, going in to the wall fast with your head down may give you an advantage over your competitors. He encourages his swimmers to practice swimming into the walls with their heads down for at least two strokes in all strokes except breaststroke. It may just give you the edge you need to move past the heat in your next race.

Kick through your break outs
Another spot in which you can pick up speed is your breakouts. Yetter promotes a strong kick off the wall to maintain the speed you just gained from pushing off the wall. Do a full pull-out for breaststroke. Keep in mind, a strong kick and a good breaststroke pull-out also need a tight streamline!

Dolphin kick underwater
If you’re streamlining with a powerful kick already, one way to take it up a notch is to dolphin kick off the wall. Lundsten incorporates dolphin kicking into practice as a drill. Swimmers will dolphin kick underwater to various marks throughout the set, especially working on awareness of the 15-meter-mark. Franklin also integrates underwater kicking in her practice by completing underwater 25s. By practicing a strong underwater kick, you’ll be sure to have the lung capacity and kicking power to leverage this asset in a meet.

Perfect Practice Makes Perfect
All of the techniques mentioned above can help you shave time in your races, but just thinking about them at meets isn’t enough. “You have to use it in practice to use it in a meet,” says Lundsten. Practice makes perfect in that your muscle memory will be developed and ready so you can focus on racing.

Goal Setting – What’s the Big Deal?

Well, we are going out on a limb here…all of us already know what the big deal is about goal setting. If you don’t know where you are going two things will happen for certain: 1) you will not get there, 2) you will get lost. As we approach our first LC meet of the season we have stressed the importance of writing goals down. It helps focus. Practices become livelier. Stroke technique is being worked on.  We are always encouraging you to push into unfamiliar territory – to get comfortable with the uncomfortable, in terms of physical discomfort caused by exertion.

USA Swimming puts out a weekly newsletter for all members and the article below was in a recent one. We thought it hit the nail on the head in several ways. We hope you will enjoy it!

SEVEN REASONS PEOPLE DON’T SET GOALS AND HOW TO OVERCOME EACH OF THEM

by Kevin Eikenberry, Chief Potential Officer, The Kevin Eikenberry Group

Talk to ten people and nine of them will tell you they believe in goal-setting. These nine people will tell you that goals are important, that they can help you be happier and healthier, and that they are the best and fastest way to achieve more in life.

I would agree with those nine people. Unfortunately eight of the nine, when pressed, will tell you they don’t set many (or any) goals; that they really want to, but….Actually, I’m being a bit optimistic here. I’ve read several times (through I can’t corroborate it with specific research right now) that only about 3% of people ever set and write down any goals. If most everyone thinks goals are important, and most everyone would like to be happier, healthier, achieve more, etc., etc., etc., why don’t they set goals?

There are seven reasons that I have observed.

1. People don’t know how to set goals.
2. People are searching for the perfect way to set goals.
3. People are afraid to set goals.
4. People are afraid to succeed.
5. People are afraid they won’t succeed.
6. People don’t want to set the goal too high.
7. People don’t want to set the goal too low.

After looking at and thinking more about this list, I believe they really are excuses for not setting goals, not reasons. Let’s look at each excuse, and then explore how to solve the problem and erase the excuse.

As you read the list this time, read them all with a whine in your voice, and look for which on the list is your personal excuse (there may be none—good for you; there may be more than one—good for you for being honest—now you have the opportunity to change your habit).

EXCUSE #1 “BUT I DON’’T KNOW HOW…..”
This makes sense in a way. How can we do anything if we don’t know how to do it? Maybe you really don’t know how, but to be honest the resources to help you learn are plentiful, and we aren’t talking rocket science here. There are thousands of books about goal-setting and hundreds of free resources on the internet. (Actually an Amazon.com search on goal setting nets more than 30,000 results, and a Google search on the same phrase yields more than 23 million results. Solution #1—Find a resource, read it and get started.

EXCUSE #2 “BUT I WANT TO SET THEM THE RIGHT WAY….”
This excuse is the opposite of Excuse #1. There are some people that collect goal-setting books, tools and techniques like others collect baseball cards. Yes, there are many approaches; and yes, some may be better than others or work better for you. But none of them will work until you do. Solution #2—Enough collecting! Pick an approach and get started.

EXCUSE #3 “BUT I’M AFRAID….”
Afraid of what? The unknown? There is nothing to be afraid of, except the unknown of trying. Recognizing your fear is a great first step, but setting goals isn’t like the unknown climbing Mt. Everest or swimming with sharks. There really is nothing to be afraid of (although there are two more excuses related to fear.) Solution #3—The best way to conquer a fear is to do the thing you fear. Set a goal. Start with a small, short-term one if you must, but just try it!

EXCUSE #4 “BUT I’M AFRAID I’LL SUCCEED….”
Actually, this excuse falls into a special category because people typically won’t really say it and might not even think it. But in reality, it may be the biggest and most powerful excuse of all. If you set a goal, you might achieve it, and in a paradoxical way, some people are afraid of the change that might come with that achievement. Or, in some other cases they don’t feel worthy of achieving it. Solution #4—Start with a small goal, one that will help you build your confidence and show you some success that you can manage. (If you have significant self-esteem issues that are preventing you from feeling worthy, I encourage you to get help.)

EXCUSE #5 “BUT I’M AFRAID I’LL FAIL…”
OK, so you may fail. If you set a goal to lose 20 pounds and you only lose 10 is that so bad? How many pounds would you have lost if you hadn’t set a goal at all? Repeat after me: “There is nothing wrong with failing. Failing is just a chance to make corrections before trying again.” Solution #5—Let go of your fear; just a little bit, just this once. Just set a goal.

EXCUSE #6 “BUT IF I SET THE GOAL TOO HIGH, I MIGHT NOT REACH IT…”
You hopefully can see that this is a combo-pack of Excuses 3 and 5 (and maybe a bit of #2 as well). If the goal is motivating to you, you will make progress. Maybe the goal is massive, and maybe you won’t reach it; but if you set it you will move in the right direction. Plus, imagine the big satisfaction of meeting-or even exceeding-that big goal. Solution #6—Set a big goal, and go for it!

EXCUSE #7 “BUT IF I SET THE GOAL TOO LOW, IT MIGHT NOT BE WORTH THE EFFORT.”
How can this be? If you set a goal and reach it, great! Then you can set another one, big or small. Just like anything else, with practice comes greater skill. Some of your goals may be easy to reach, and that is OK. Over time you will learn to calibrate the goals you set to be just right for you. Solution #7—Set a small goal and get started.

Have you noticed a theme in these solutions? Since you know goals can make your life better, set some. Set one or set fifty, but just get started. The best way to get to where you want to go is to decide what that destination is. The best way to start setting goals is to set one. (Yes, it is just that simple.)

Get started. Set a goal, even if it isn’t perfect. Set a goal, even if it’s too big or too small. Set a goal, and I’m guessing you already will have achieved one of your biggest goals

—”You know, I really ought to set some goals this year….”