Break your goals down into small steps and enjoy the small steps forward. Focusing only on mistakes and failures eats away at your confidence and strength. Even the best swimmers make mistakes and fail. Keep your mind on your strengths and what you can do better.
Also keep your goals in mind every day. You can put a picture of it on your mobile phone or on your fridge door.
Achieving your goal requires patience and sacrifice. Not every training day is a triumph. The important thing is that you practice. Then you can go far. Repetition and hard work outweigh gifts on the scales.
Most of us know what we should be doing, but we can’t get it done. Do you try your best in training or do you only do 90% of them? Do you eat enough after a workout? Everyday choices make all the difference.
We are comfort-oriented by nature. If we want to be better, we have to get out of our comfort zone.
Have you heard of the 10 000 hour rule? If you practice any skill for 10,000 hours, you will excel at it. Success is always a lot of work. But it’s important that you enjoy your swimming training.
«We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, it’s a habit.» – Aristotle
We don’t always succeed and reach our goal. That’s part of life too.
Image training
Many athletes use mental training to improve their performance. These can be, for example, visualising and living the ideal swimming technique or race situation.
Imagery training can help you prepare for races in advance and anticipate different events. What will the race venue look like? What kind of swimsuit are you wearing? How does it feel to swim with good technique? What if something goes wrong – even if you drop your glasses? When the race comes around, the situation is familiar and your best performance is more likely. When you visualise your performance, you activate the neural pathways, muscles and parts of the brain that are also needed for the actual race swim.
You can also tune yourself into your ideal state of mind, in Larssen’s words, your mood. Top swimmer Michael Phelps used music to do this, which he always listened to before a race. Phelps’ mood before the race was relaxed and mellow. However, some kind of beast was awakened in the pool.
With mental imagery training, you can condition yourself, for example, so that a particular object or movement reminds you of successes.
«One swimmer had trouble at the start. We anchored a feeling of success in an earring. This was found in the race by touching the earring.» – Psychological coach Päivi Steffen explains.
