Friday, December 10, 2021
I Have Been Stuck on the Same Time for Over a Year, What Am I Doing Wrong?
This is one of the more common complaints that I hear from swimmers. They work hard, go to all of their team's practices, even swimming faster in practice, but when it comes to meets and their best events they just can't seem to break through this invisible barrier.
These kinds of performance slumps in swimming always follow a predictable path, and one that insures your racing difficulties will continue unless you can understand how they operate. They often get their start with one or two really disappointing swims in a meet or race that is important to the swimmer. Coming up short in a big meet like this tends to stay with you emotionally! You can't seem to stop thinking about it and beating yourself up for it.
As a result, these bad swims are still getting air time in your head long after the meet has passed. When you hang onto past failures or disappointments in this way, it begins to breed doubt in your mind and starts to erode your self-confidence. As the next important meet approaches, there's a part of you that starts to place even more importance on your times and the outcomes of your races.
This over-focus on your times, “mentally hanging out in the future” will always make you nervous, tighten up your muscles and cause your breathing to become faster and shallower. Of course, tight muscles will shorten your stroke, making it less efficient and faster, shallower breathing will make you feel like you have no training base and the end result of these two physiological changes is enough to totally sabotage your swims.
In addition, when you go into any meet thinking about your times, in other words going into your races with expectations such as, “I need to finally get this time?” or “I have to!” or “What if 'IT' happens again and I don't?” Then, you will end up putting even more pressure on yourself by creating a “trying too hard” headset. This will lead to you forcing or muscling the swim, causing you to go way slower than your ability. When this happens, the whole pattern gets reinforced and you'll place even more pressure on yourself for the next meet or swim!
Swimming fast when it counts is all about staying physically loose and mentally composed. You can NEVER do this when you're pressuring yourself with an outcome-based focus. You can only do this when your focus both before and during the race is on what you're doing and specifically on the feel of your movements warming up, behind the blocks and then in the water while you're racing. When you focus on the feel of your swim, you'll stay loose and confident and swim to your potential.
If you really want to bust though that pesky time barrier and finally get that breakthrough swim that you know you're capable of, you have to train yourself to stop mentally time traveling. Slumps are always maintained by thinking in the past about bad swims and then immediately jumping ahead to the future and pressuring yourself to make sure that “it” doesn't happen again.
To finally bust that slump and get those times that you desperately want, you must discipline yourself to stay mentally focused in the NOW on the feel of your races, one stroke at a time!
This means that the days leading up to a meet and the hours and minutes before you race, you must stay aware of the instant that your focus of concentration leaves the now and either jumps ahead to the future or goes back to the past, and then you must quickly return your focus to the now! Keep in mind that it doesn't really matter if you “time travel” a lot as long as each and every time you do lose your focus, you quickly “reset” it back to the NOW!
These kinds of performance slumps in swimming always follow a predictable path, and one that insures your racing difficulties will continue unless you can understand how they operate. They often get their start with one or two really disappointing swims in a meet or race that is important to the swimmer. Coming up short in a big meet like this tends to stay with you emotionally! You can't seem to stop thinking about it and beating yourself up for it.
As a result, these bad swims are still getting air time in your head long after the meet has passed. When you hang onto past failures or disappointments in this way, it begins to breed doubt in your mind and starts to erode your self-confidence. As the next important meet approaches, there's a part of you that starts to place even more importance on your times and the outcomes of your races.
This over-focus on your times, “mentally hanging out in the future” will always make you nervous, tighten up your muscles and cause your breathing to become faster and shallower. Of course, tight muscles will shorten your stroke, making it less efficient and faster, shallower breathing will make you feel like you have no training base and the end result of these two physiological changes is enough to totally sabotage your swims.
In addition, when you go into any meet thinking about your times, in other words going into your races with expectations such as, “I need to finally get this time?” or “I have to!” or “What if 'IT' happens again and I don't?” Then, you will end up putting even more pressure on yourself by creating a “trying too hard” headset. This will lead to you forcing or muscling the swim, causing you to go way slower than your ability. When this happens, the whole pattern gets reinforced and you'll place even more pressure on yourself for the next meet or swim!
Swimming fast when it counts is all about staying physically loose and mentally composed. You can NEVER do this when you're pressuring yourself with an outcome-based focus. You can only do this when your focus both before and during the race is on what you're doing and specifically on the feel of your movements warming up, behind the blocks and then in the water while you're racing. When you focus on the feel of your swim, you'll stay loose and confident and swim to your potential.
If you really want to bust though that pesky time barrier and finally get that breakthrough swim that you know you're capable of, you have to train yourself to stop mentally time traveling. Slumps are always maintained by thinking in the past about bad swims and then immediately jumping ahead to the future and pressuring yourself to make sure that “it” doesn't happen again.
To finally bust that slump and get those times that you desperately want, you must discipline yourself to stay mentally focused in the NOW on the feel of your races, one stroke at a time!
This means that the days leading up to a meet and the hours and minutes before you race, you must stay aware of the instant that your focus of concentration leaves the now and either jumps ahead to the future or goes back to the past, and then you must quickly return your focus to the now! Keep in mind that it doesn't really matter if you “time travel” a lot as long as each and every time you do lose your focus, you quickly “reset” it back to the NOW!