Swimming With Urgency: When Does It Begin?

Let's start by thinking back to what Dr. Alan Goldberg taught us in October. If you remember, he started his talk by explaining what goals are, how we should establish our goals, and (most importantly) when we should be reminding ourselves of our goals. He told everyone that "Goals are for practice, not for meets." If you are reminding yourself of your goals on meet day (especially when you are behind the blocks before a race) it will work against you. When Dr. Goldberg told us goals are for practice he meant that you have to remind yourself of your goals on a daily basis for motivation at practice. It really is not a mystery what the secret of success in swimming is: the more work you put into your training, the more you will get out of it in meet results. Coach Dan this year has even put it into equation form:

Practice Attendance + Practice Effort = Meet Performance

Everything you do in workouts on a daily basis leads to your meet performance. When you get to a meet you cannot just flip a switch and be a great swimmer. No one in this world is truly great without effort in practice. Thomas Edison made over 10,000 attempts at developing a more efficient incandescent light bulb before coming up with a design that actually worked well (NOTE: Edison did not invent the light bulb but greatly perfected its performance). A reporter asked Edison if he felt like a failure and Edison replied by saying that he was not a failure because he now knew of 10,000 ways not succeed. That kind of perseverance is what you need in the pool at practices if you truly want to become great.

There is a famous quote attributed to many different people, "You play how you practice." Most superstar athletes take this quote to heart and practice with the same tenacity and drive they take to game/meet day. Michael Jordan, in my opinion, is the greatest athlete of my generation. Jordan was famous for going all out in practice, even yelling at teammates who were not putting out the same effort he was. This is a guy who was making millions of dollars on the basketball court and in endorsements, who played 40 minutes a game at top speed and still had energy to go all out for a two hour practice on off days. Jordan knew his ability to play at the highest level came because he practiced with a sense of urgency. That is how Jordan went from being cut from his high school basketball team freshman year to becoming the greatest basketball player of all time.

What you can do to step up the urgency in practices:

• Most importantly, do what you are told to do. Nothing frustrates a coach more than a swimmer who is not following directions. When you are told to race, race. When you are told to work on technique, work on technique.
• When you are working on technique or drills do the drills exactly how the coaches tell you. Make sure you are continually thinking of how it relates to your full stroke. All drills have a purpose, make sure you are focusing on that while you are doing the drills.
• When it is time to work...DO IT! Swim that repeat in practice like it is the biggest race of your life. And then do it again, and again, and again...
• Do not be afraid to race in practice. If you are constantly holding back in practice you will never be able to fully swim with a sense of urgency in a meet. It is okay to race your teammates (as long as it is kept friendly) but most importantly you have to race the clock and yourself. You should be able to remember the times you do in different practice sets and compare them to times you have done in practice in the past. It would be most helpful to keep a daily practice journal where you write down some of the sets you did each day, what your times were in those sets, and how you felt while swimming them.

Swimming is a very technical sport. However everything will always boil down to racing. You have to put forth peak effort in practice every day if you are going to be the best you can be on meet day. If you are going to be able to swim with a sense of urgency in a meet you have to be able to do it in practice every day.

Next: Part 3 - Brian Dawkins and "Dog"