How can a swimmer make waves, when motivation levels are low?
Making Waves
How can a swimmer make waves, when motivation levels are low? - By Daniel Ferguson
Imagine waking up in the morning at 4AM, it's time to swim. Before most people have started their day, you're in the pool. Swimming is an intense sport, involving high levels of commitment. How can a swimmer motivate themselves?
Being a swimmer is one of those sports where the levels of commitment and dedication are at a very high level. This pins down to the early rises for swimming training, even potentially swimming twice a day and training most days of the week. To add to this swimming is also an energy sapping sport in terms of how much movement the body must endure. Here are some ways a swimmer can motivate themselves to keep at it, whether they're going through a tough period, struggling to get up in the early mornings or just needs that boost.
Small steps
It can all feel like a very big task. If you look at it in the grand scheme of things, you're taking on entire months and years of early rises, hours and hours in the pool and sacrifices to elements of your social life at times.
If you were to look at a stairway to the moon, it would seem an impossible task, but if you were to look at one step, it becomes a lot easier: taking things one step at a time. How can you simplify things?
- Make TO-DO lists: write those small steps down: you could have a to-do list for each day, you could have one for each week, whatever you prefer. An example of a daily to do list could be: 6am-8am Swim, 9am-3pm School, 5pm-7pm Swim, 8-9pm do homework. Now that example is quite intense, but the concept is about breaking bigger challenges into smaller steps, it's nice to tick these small steps off on your to-do list too: it creates a sense of accomplishment.
- Shift your focus: learn to deal with when your mind starts to focus on the bigger picture (all those hours and early rises) and learn how to bring it back to a smaller step. For example, you're at training and start to think about the rest of the month's training plan: start focusing on what you're doing in the present moment - the next few lengths in training.
Understanding it's worth it & having a reason why
A friend of mine (Kim Davaadorj) has swam at national level. I asked him, "What motivated you when you were a swimmer?"
He replied, "knowing the hard work will pay off."
This is important because all the hard work can feel pointless if it's for no reason. When you are getting up in the early hours, what's your reason? Kim's was knowing the hard work will pay off, knowing that if he goes to that training session it will be worth it. Everyone can have a different reason why, it could even be simply because you enjoy it. Understand your why, and it can make things feel worth it.
Enjoy what you're doing. If you're a kid who loves their swimming or even a high level athlete, have fun with it.
Trust your routine: Be Consistent
Kim also spoke about, "every morning was the same, keeping it consistent." It's good to get in a routine, this links to being consistent with those small steps to achieve the bigger challenge. Trust what you're doing. Creating a vision board can help. You could have images of why you're doing it, steps to you're routine on it, goals you want to achieve, be creative: it can motivate you to see this when you're getting up for training or before a swimming gala. You could have it in your room: it could be anywhere. This will help to be consistent with your routine and your 'reason why' for swimming.
Self-talk & visualisation
Picture yourself at training, picture it going the way you would like it to. Picture it not going the way you would like it to and how you would deal with this. Picturing things before they happen can make things easier when you're actually doing them.
Add an element of self-talk into this: tell yourself "you got this, just keep swimming."
Discover what works best for you and keep making waves.
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