5 Things to Tell Yourself When You Get Up on the Blocks

Pre-race nerves and pressure come for us all. Here are five reminders to tell yourself when you step up onto the blocks on race day.

Competing can be one of the hardest parts of our sport. Harder in a different way from grinding out winter morning practices and those plateaus in training that test your commitment.

But hard, nonetheless.

Because swimming fast on race day is less about blind, grunt-it-out till you finish it effort, but more about using the right mindset when stepping on the block to excel.

The bright lights, expectations, pressure and “this tech suit is way too tight I can’t feel my ankles” combine to create a different type of challenge.

Here are five things to tell yourself when you step up on the block at the Big Meet.

“Swim my own race.”

All season long you’ve trained to swim this race in a specific way.

The aerobic sets built the foundation to sustain speed. The kick sets framed a finishing kick to help you close the race like a boss. And the power development sets gave you that high-octane fuel to get out of your breakouts fast and powerfully.

Which means it’s important to remember to race the race you trained for.

Staying on top of this could include creating a simple cue-based race strategy (First 50: Easy speed, Second 50: Accelerate, etcetera) to help you stay focused on swimming the best race you have in you.

As we will discuss later, swimmers should use the energy of competition to help them swim their own race at a higher level.

“The work is done.”

I was a classic last-minute tinkerer when I was an age group swimmer. I’d see a faster swimmer do something fast and cool during the meet warm-up and think, Hey, I should add that to my race.

These last-minute, new additions rarely worked out for me as they were so novel that I’d have a hard time doing it—whether a new start stance, extended kicking underwater, or even a different arm recovery when swimming freestyle—in a controlled setting like practice.

Let alone under pressure and a swim meet.

“The work is done” is a reminder that you’ve already done the work in training, both in terms of the technique and form you are going to use as well as all the conditioning work completed during training.

When stepping up on the block, avoid the urge to overthink and let yourself swim the way you’ve swum a million times in practice.

“You deserve to be here.”

Competing against faster competitors is a double-edged sword.

On one hand, faster swimmers can bring out the best of us, pushing us beyond what we consider our limits. They can motivate, inspire, and push.

On the other, it can be intimidating swimming against competitors that are significantly faster than you. Leading you to feel like you don’t deserve to be here.

Unless you broke into the aquatic center, forged a fake identity, with a made-up seed time, the reality is that you 100 percent deserve to be here.

“I love to compete.”

Comparison making is a normal part of swimming.

We see where we rank according to other swimmers, both in the psych sheets and on the scoreboard. We compare how we split against past performances. We measure up our swims in finals versus the swims in preliminaries. We compare how we feel in the water today compared to yesterday’s session.

And yet, swimmers can start to wilt or shy away from competing because they don’t want to appear aggressive or unsportsmanlike. Or they find the idea of being competitive to be stressful and draining.

But competing is normal and healthy. (Like anything, there are limits. This should be obvious but worth underscoring.)

Competing is also… fun!

Competitions are designed to get us to increase our intensity and performance in the water.

Compete against your goals. Compete against your past results. Race the swimmer in the next lane. Use the energy of competition to supercharge your swims.

“Have fun!”

Swim meets can be a lot. There’s the excitement of close finishes, the lulls and boredom between events. The soggy, sore butt from hours of sitting on metal bleachers. The pressure, the expectations, the golden finishes, the disqualifications.

Ultimately, swim meets should be fun. Yes, you’ve got big goals. Yes, you want to see your hard work pay off. Yes, the pressure and expectations can be heavy.

But swimmers almost universally swim their best when they are having fun.

At the end of the day, we get to do this sport.

When stepping up on the block, remind yourself to enjoy yourself and have fun. There’s nothing more fun than swimming well and chasing perceived limits.

Happy swimming!

ABOUT OLIVIER POIRIER-LEROY

Olivier Poirier-Leroy is a former national-level swimmer, author, swim coach, and certified personal trainer. He’s the author of YourSwimBook, a ten-month logbook for competitive swimmers.

He’s also the author of the best-selling mental training workbook for competitive swimmers, Conquer the Pool: The Swimmer’s Ultimate Guide to a High-Performance Mindset.

It combines sport psychology research, worksheets, anecdotes, and examples of Olympians past and present to give swimmers everything they need to conquer the mental side of the sport.

Ready to take your mindset to the next level in the pool?

👉👉 Click here to learn more about Conquer the Pool.