MENTAL TRAINING: SWIMMING FAST AND UNBURDENED FOR YOURSELF

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.

USA Swimming - Speedo Tip of the Week Archives

If You Knew

Posted by Glenn Mills on Jan 11, 2008 09:03AM (2,683 views)

If you knew that the work you were doing today would reap rewards tomorrow... would you do it? If you knew that something you SHOULD do today COULD reap rewards in the future... would you do it?

Therein lies the problem with life. Nothing is guaranteed.

There is a direct relationship between work, and reward. For the most part, reward comes not from luck, not by chance, and not from knowing the right person or from being in the right place at the right time. In most cases, reward comes from being prepared for a situation when it's presented to you. Those key situations, the ones that offer a way to advance yourself, will be coming your way throughout your entire life, and in every PART of your life -- athletics, career, academics, and social. The question is always: Are you ready to answer the call when opportunity is offered?

As an athlete, you KNOW you have to attend practice to succeed. What's not so obvious is that WHAT you practice and how you EXECUTE the practice is what determines how WELL you succeed. Attendance does not equal success. Attendance with correct focus allows success. Attendance with desire allows success. Just because you show up at practice, and keep showing up a hundred times during a season or thousands of times over an athletic career, doesn't give you an automatic pass to success. Anyone can show up at practice and go back and forth. It's those who show up with a purpose who succeed. It's those who execute today's practice as if it's the ONLY gateway to their goals who will be closer to their ultimate goals.
Look at your everyday life. Look at your school work or career. If you KNEW that reading an extra 30 minutes a night would guarantee you better grades, would you do it? If you KNEW that studying those formulas an extra 15 minutes a day would assure you of passing next week's test, would you do it? If you KNEW that by understanding the needs of each potential customer would get you the sale, would you study your customers? If you KNEW that by streamlining TIGHTLY off every wall you'd travel faster while swimming LESS, thus improving your times with no additional effort, would you do it?

You wouldn't answer NO to any of those, would you? And, if you did, there are other websites for you to look at. ;)

Preparation is the key to EVERYTHING if you want to be successful. While it's easy to argue that people DO still win the lottery, I personally don't know anyone who has. I'm sure there is someone out there with a story of a lottery winner. I'm sure it's very exciting but, alas, it's not ME and it's probably not you if you're reading this. Most of us are destined to be on the work/reward track. But if you keep a positive attitude about this, you can take a lot of pride in the fact that you have created your own success in life.

To stay positive you need to embrace the challenge. The path is clear, but it's not easy. The hard-work path requires that you stay current on your work so that you can stay current on reaping your rewards. Success will come with more regularity when you prepare for it. Remember: When it comes to success, luck has NOTHING to do with it.

If You Knew - GoSwim!

ABCs OF MENTAL TRAINING: Q is for Quality Practice

BY DR. AIMEE KIMBALL//MENTAL TRAINING CONSULTANT 

Often when people talk about being mentally prepared, the focus is on competition. However, when you stop to think about it, you spend more time practicing than you do competing. Therefore, it is essential to make sure you aren’t just going through the motions at practice, you have to make each training session a quality one.

Let’s Call it Preparation
I’ve always had issues with calling practice “practice.” To me, the word practice has the connotation of just going over your skills and repeating what you already know. I am not suggesting there is anything wrong with the physical act of practicing. Just the opposite. I think that practice is extremely important, and because of its importance, we need to view it as more than just something swimmers do because it comes with the sport. I would rather people refer to this time in the pool as “preparation.” I believe that if you connect everything you do during your “practice time” to the fact that it is preparing you for your meet that you will take it more seriously, have a better attitude, and have a more intense focus. All of these positive mental changes will then help you to perform better at competition. For example, instead of dreading yet another 6 a.m. practice that your coach is forcing you to attend, if you realize the morning session is an opportunity to prepare your body and your mind for the upcoming meet, you may be more motivated, thus making you more productive.

Additionally, by thinking about your “practice time” as “preparation,” you can enhance your confidence on race day. Before your meets you will be able to look back and remember all of the little things you did to prepare for each event. In knowing you made the most of your time, you can trust that your training has you fully prepared to race your best.

Quality Control
How many times have you gone to practice just hoping you survive the training session? If you feel training is a chore and do just enough to get by, that’s probably not what I would consider to be top quality.\

To assess the quality of your training, first identify what makes a quality practice. You can define this for yourself and may want to include things like: self-talk, attitude, focus, pushing yourself harder when you’re tired, doing each drill as designed, setting the pace for your lane, swimming hard until the completion of each set, etc.

Then, take your last five practices and grade them using the criteria you just created. Use a grading scale like those in school:

• A (4 pts) = Excellent
• B (3 pts) = Good
• C (2 pts) =Average
• D (1 pt) =Fair
• F (0 pts) =Poor

Next, average the number of points for each practice. For example:

• Day 1: A =4
• Day 2: B=3
• Day 3: A=4
• Day 4: C=2
• Day 5:A=4

Total Points: 17

Average Grade: 17 (pts) /5 (days)= 3.4                         

Overall Grade: B+

If you don’t average a 3.5 or better, you probably are not making the most of your practice time. Having a “B” average is enough to keep you at your current performance level. In order to improve, it will take “A” type training.

While you may think an “average” day is acceptable, if you have those kinds of practices too often you are going to develop bad habits. It is especially important to focus on having an “excellent” practice on days when you are tired because that’s the most difficult time to have proper technique. If you can get yourself not to settle for being average and can push to be better than just good, you are ensuring that you will be able to swim well and maintain form and speed at the end of a race.

How to Improve My Practice Quality
In addition to making sure you have proper nutrition habits and warm-up correctly, improving your practice quality is as simple as making sure you are focusing on the correct things. Here is a checklist to make sure your mind is where it needs to be in order for you to get the most from each moment in the pool:

Pre-Practice Mental Checklist:

1. What specifically am I going to improve on today?
2. What will I do to make sure I get better at this?
3. Why is this important for me to improve?
4. My goal by the end of practice is to….
5. How can I have a positive influence on my teammates today?

Note that sometimes it helps swimmers not to just focus on themselves, but to focus on teammates as well. There will be some days when you are exhausted and find it very difficult to be motivated. On these days, it can help to focus on being a positive influence on others.

During Practice Mental Checklist:

1. What am I working on in this set? What is the purpose of this drill?
   a.  How can I use this in my race?
2. Is there anything else I need to do to prepare myself for the upcoming meet?
3. What is my mindset right now?
   a.  Can I improve my attitude? Focus?
4. What do I want others to say about me after this practice?

Carpe Momentum (Seize the Moment)
With each practice you have the opportunity to get better, to stay where you are, or to get worse. When you know that what you do today prepares you for tomorrow it makes practice easier. Remember, if you do all of the hard work in training, meets will be a lot more fun.
Make it Great!

Dr. Aimee

Dr. Aimee C. Kimball is the Director of Mental Training at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Sports Medicine. She received a PhD from the University of Tennessee where she specialized in sport psychology.

She is an Association for the Advancement 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.

As a Mental Training Consultant, Dr. Kimball has worked with professional, collegiate, high school, recreational, and youth athletes in a variety of sports, and assists the Pittsburgh Steelers in analyzing potential draft picks.

She has been a featured speaker at conferences across the nation and has appeared in Men’s Health Magazine, Runner’s World, Athletic Management Magazine, various local and national newspapers, and has appeared on ESPN, NPR, and news broadcasts across the country.

She is a Clinical Faculty member in the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Orthopaedics and an adjunct faulty member in the Sports Marketing Department at Duquesne University. Currently, Dr. Kimball works with athletes and other performers to assist them in achieving success in sport and life. For more information contact: 412-432-3777; kimballac@upmc.edu