Tip #1 Set Powerful Goals
Your goal, a vision of where you want to be is your greatest asset. Setting powerful goals is not enough, you need to know the fundamentals of setting an amazing goal, and more importantly, learn how to create a comprehensive and realistic plan to achieve it. Make sure your goals are specific, realistic, measurable, simple, actionable, and ongoing.
Specific: Your goal should be as specific as possible. There should be a particular aspect of your training that you intend to work on. Narrow your goals down to two or three to help you stay focused and simplify your training and regenerative efforts.
Realistic: set realistic but challenging goals, this will make you work very hard to achieve them. Avoid setting easy goals that may cause you to develop a fear of setting future goals with a high risk of not reaching them. No matter how challenging your goals may be, set them based on your level of athletic and competitive skills.
Measurable: Be objective and make sure your goal is performance oriented. So you can keep track of your performance, set the time, date, the precise amount of change you intend to see, etc., so you don’t miss out on the celebration that comes with your achievement.
Easy: Write down your goals and post them in conspicuous places around you eg your bathroom, kitchen, training bag, seeing them often will remind you of your goals in practice. An example of a goal is “achieve the fastest time in the 50-yard freestyle meet in the next month.” Put it in writing and post it around you.
Actionable: Draw up an action plan on how you want to achieve your goal. It can go from day-to-day practice to different training methods, to include them in your routine. Training methods could be:
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Include top speed work in practice at a volume of certain meters per week or
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Include an additional quality kick each day equal to a number of yards per week
Continuous: make sure your goal setting is an ongoing thing and stick to the plan. Set reminders to stay on track and take time to regularly review your goals.
Tip #2 Break bad habits
Good or bad habits make up who we are. How we react to things, what we focus our energy on, what we eat, how we train, etc., are indicators of our habits. However, with a commitment to daily actions, bad habits can be transformed into new, better ones. There are 4 steps you can take to break your bad habits:
- To identify: look within yourself to determine which harmful habits are affecting your performance and when it typically happens. For example, do you give up on tough sets when you fall behind your teammates, or do you eat junk food when you’re at school?
- What is the reward?: What are you to gain from the bad clothes that you cling so tightly to them? In the first example, the reward is pride that it wasn’t worth putting in full effort behind teammates, so you’d rather not try too hard and come in second than exert all your energy and fall behind after all. . The reward of the second scenario is convenience; the 5 minutes before school it will take you to prepare a healthy lunch.
- What is the compensation?: What are you giving up for pride and convenience? When you cling to pride, you’re giving up a better level of fitness and confidence that would come from a job well done, while if you opt for comfort, you’re giving up adequate fuel to keep your body running at optimal levels.
Our bad habits are not neutral, they push us in the opposite direction of where we are supposed to go.
- Engage: make a commitment to change bad habits, gradually change them in the form of a new and better one. Talk to yourself positively every time the negative “I CAN’T” thought comes up. Every time you tell yourself that you can’t, that it’s too hard, insert a “BUT” and a positive affirmation at the end. For example, I can’t finish this series, it’s too hard… but if I did, I’d be a better swimmer.
Tip #3 Get motivated
We all experience those moments when we have doubts. Both in training and in competition, where things seem hopelessly stacked against us. Having a history of your workouts can give you that nudge to help you get back on track, so to stay motivated, record all your best times, from the short course and unshaven event, to your best 100 free throws (no backboard). , will help you follow and celebrate them.
Tip #4 Stay focused
What sets the greats apart from the rest is the ability to focus when it matters most, being able to isolate yourself from the world and make all the noise disappear. So to stay focused;
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Please remove any form of distraction in practice or during competition, log out of your social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat etc, turn off your mobile phones and any other devices.
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Shut out all mental distractions inside and outside of you.
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Don’t depend on your time by going for long swimming sessions, take frequent breaks to refresh yourself mentally and physically.
Tip #5: Track Your Performance
One of the biggest benefits of tracking your performance in the pool is gaining accountability for your swimming. Periodic evaluation is essential throughout a training cycle or a season. This will help you;
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Stay up to date with your goals.
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Know where you’re kicking ass.
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Conquer the weak points of your training and swimming.
The faster you improve, the more likely you are to beat the competition. At the end of the day, this is how races are decided, this is how personal records are made.
