How to be patient and persevere through difficult times

Quite simply, most swimmers who are not seeing improvements in their swim times most likely have tendencies of not coming to all the practices, showing up late, they don't stretch, don't do the prescribed dry-land exercises, are the last in the water, or do not put forth precise and deliberate effort to improve while swimming.  These are also the swimmers who make any and every excuse necessary to skip parts sets when the sets get tough.  They are also most likely the ones not taking care of themselves outside of the pool as well.  They simply just do not do what it takes to see improvements.  With them, the answer of why they are not improving and the solution to their problem is pretty straight forward.  However, what about your most dedicated swimmers who put forth the most effort?  What do you tell those swimmers when they are not hitting their best times?

The biggest obstacle I face every season with my older swimmers is trying to get them to understand they will not improve in every event at every meet.  With "seasoned" swimmers; those who are of high school age or older and have been training for several years, even the most dedicated, hard working swimmers may only see a time improvement in their primary event once or twice a year.  If you look at the top swimmers in the world, they may only see improvement once every quadrennial.  With the reversion back to "low-tech" swim suits, the worlds top swimmers who swam best times in the high-tech suits may not ever see a true time improvement again in their lifetime.

Swimming is measured by time, and not seeing improvement can be very challenging.  However, I believe one of the best assets of our sport is that it teaches swimmers how to be patient and persevere through difficult times.  Those who can withstand the trials of continuous effort with little to no improvement in our sport, will assuredly be rewarded at some point in their lives; if not with a best time, with the awesome power to overcome and work through many obstacles life will assuredly throw their way during their lifetime.  Working through challenges is part of life.  Keep working, keep pushing, keep believing, and things will happen.  As quoted from John Quincy Adams; "Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air."

I find sitting down with a swimmer and showing them their past accomplishments and what it took to achieve those accomplishments is very beneficial.  Most often than not, they will see their best times were achieved at the end of the season at their most important swim meet of the year.  I believe having swimmers understand the process it took to achieve their best times will alleviate much of the tension of early and mid-season swim meets.  These early meets should be more about practicing for their season-ending championships than they are about trying to hit best times.  They need to understand the seasonal training cycle and how each phase will affect their performance at swim meets.  It is also important for them to understand their focus during most of the year should be based on technical and tactical improvements that will lead to greater accomplishments down the road; not time.  Focus on "process goals"; not "outcome goals".  Process goals are the goals that lead to the outcome; like not breathing into or out of your turns in freestyle, kicking out a certain number of dolphin kicks off each wall, holding a certain stroke rate, maintaining proper head position, etc.  Achieving or hitting your process goals should be considered a mark of improvement.  Getting swimmers to buy into this philosophy should allow them to stay focused on the task at hand and alleviate some of the pressure of continually trying to hit best times.

Just last year, two of my top swimmers, one male and one female, swam though much of the year with little to no time improvements in their various events.  It was a difficult season of constant reminders of "the process", being patient and continuing to push forward with relentless desire and determination.  Through their struggles and continuous effort came the most rewarding seasons of their and my lifetime.  Looking back, I am sure they will both agree it was well worth their struggles, and their feelings of accomplishment after achieving the best performances of their lives at their season-ending championship meet were much greater than they would have been had it been "easy".